EU to lead a food safety program for three years in association with 23 counterparts from 12 countries. The effort, dubbed “FOODSAFETY4EU,” will be coordinated by the CNR National Research Council; ENEA Italian National Agency for New Technologies (Biotechnologies and Agroindustry Division) and APRE  Agency for the Promotion of European Research of Italy;  work is set to run from the start of 2021 until the end of 2023 with a budget of € 3 million ($3.5 million). A multi stakeholder program comprising of stakeholders from 12 countries will put efforts in R&D and will be sharing their scientific knowledge to work upon and provide better services. Digital tools, co-designed strategies, communication models, policy making and risk assessment will be employed to deal all the issues if comes, at its earliest.

It is the first project funded for the “Supporting the food safety systems of the future” program by the European Commission. A network of 44 other food safety supporting partners will populate the platform and interact by expressing opinions, sharing information, data and reports; providing strategy advice and sharing project results.

The project will promote the integration and interoperability of the digital tools developed by FOODSAFETY4EU with other data and other digital platforms, starting from the electronic component of METROFOOD-RI and FNS-Cloud, the resources for food safety and risk assessment developed by EFSA and the database given by other initiatives such as FACCE-JPI, HDHL-JPI and EIT-Food.