An official website of the United States government.
The aim of this project is to evaluate network analysis tools using field trials and to develop a set of criteria to aid early identification of emerging risks that arise in imported foods. The network analysis tools enhance intelligence gained from analysis of worldwide food safety reports by mining this data.
<P>
The project is made up of a number of tasks:
<ul> <LI>
a stakeholder consultation with UK and worldwide food safety bodies</LI>
<LI>
a search to establish ‘best practice’ via scrutiny of practices across the EU</LI>
<LI>
evaluation of current network analysis tools using a field trial with stakeholders via a focus group</LI>
<LI>
evaluation of current network analysis tools using a field trial with stakeholders via email</LI>
<LI>
conduct field trial on selected case studies (e.g. nitrofurans, melamine etc) to see how early in the timeline the data started showing a trend</LI>
<LI>
evaulate the tools to identify emerging risks, by developing a set of criteria </LI> </ul>
Background<br/>
World food safety is a growing issue resulting from the globalisation of food supply lines, which necessitates a continued and considerable response from regulatory authorities to ensure that imported food is safe to eat. LGC has begun a collaboration with Kingston University using rapid improvements in computational power to study trends in food alerts that will ultimately yield real time intelligence of emerging risks so that, if required, action can be taken at an early stage. The programme has been developed to a prototype stage that will be tested in this project in order to ensure stakeholder input is able to fashion the final advanced version so that it is ‘fit for purpose’.
<p>Find more about this project and other FSA food safety-related projects at the <a href="http://www.food.gov.uk/science/research/" target="_blank">Food Standards Agency Research webpage</a>.