Ensuring food safety and developing analytical methods

Ensuring food safety and optimizing food processing methods contributes to the growth and competitiveness of food enterprises and gives added value to developed products. Ensuring the quality of food and the introduction of new technologies is relevant, particularly in the context of the prevailing global political situation, when food prices are under extraordinary upward pressure. Measures to reduce waste by increasing food shelf-life and enhancing processes are climate-wise in terms of resource use. The development of food production has regional , as well as national, significance and it concerns the whole security of supply chains. Finland’s strengths include a transparent food chain that will be renewed with high-tech expertise, as defined in the Finnish strategy for food research and innovation for 2021-2035. The Government’s report on food policy policies until 2030 states that Finland wants to be a pioneer in the responsible food value chain. We want to be profiled internationally on clean nature, pure raw materials, responsible production, open information sharing and good cooperation between all parties in food sector.

The project explores the means and possibilities of promoting food safety to combat food fraud through analytics development. The project focuses on the development of food processing methods, such as high-pressure treatments and drying methods, and improving the shelf-life of food. Methodological development is designed to achieve extended shelf-lives and optimization of new processing methods. Furthermore, the development of laboratory analytics is aimed at achieving faster utilization of results specifically related to microbiological quality. The expertise gained can be used in the development of the activities of food enterprises.