Food safety goes back to its roots

A European-funded project is developing hand-held devices to bring food testing from the laboratory to the farm, slaughterhouse and processing plant.

The GoodFood project, funded by the European Commission's Information Society Technologies (IST) research initiative is using micro and nanotechnology to develop portable appliances to detect toxins, pathogens and chemicals in foodstuffs on the spot. Food samples would no longer have to be sent to a laboratory for tests but could be analysed for safety where the food is produced, packaged or sold.

“The aim is to achieve full safety and quality assurance along the complete food chain,” said Carles Cané, the coordinator of the IST programme-funded project at the National Microelectronics Centre in Spain.

GoodFood are using similar sensors to those developed for the medical field in an innovative way to screen for virtually any pathogen or toxin in any produce, although the project partners are focusing their research on quality and safety analysis for dairy goods, fruit and wine.