Posted Tuesday 15 June 2010
Thousands of alerts about contaminated food are produced each year, particularly by developed countries, but there is no single international system for monitoring food safety. This prompted Professor Naughton and his colleagues, from the School of Life Sciences, to develop a program to analyse alerts and produce a global picture of the countries that trade and detect contaminated food that can be deadly or cause health problems from food poisoning to long term degenerative diseases. Professor Naughton recently presented a summary of the team's findings to a conference organised by the European Food Security Authority, the EU's food safety and security watchdog.
Professor Naughton said the program was the most sophisticated available, providing more detailed information more quickly than its rivals. "No other system can reflect the complexity of this information in a snapshot form," he said."It can be particularly helpful to developing countries new to food testing because information is easy to access and available in minutes." The program could also be applied to other global health hazards such as pest control or illegal animal or plant imports.
Professor Naughton said the program could provide profiles of individual countries that had problems with food safety as well as identifying particular contaminants that needed investigating, such as high levels of mercury in fish. He said: "We'd like to develop the tool to create an international alert system that will provide real time information about emerging patterns and problems." The program could also be used to help prepare for malicious or terrorist attempts to contaminate food, he added.
Professor Naughton, a biochemist, worked with Dr Andrea Petroczi, a statistician, and Dr Tamas Nepusz, a computer programmer in a multi-disciplinary team.
Further information: Professor Naughton is chairman of a panel of independent experts appointed to assess the quality of the European Food Security Authority's (EFSA's) scientific activities. EFSA is the EU's food safety and security watchdog.
His research on worldwide food safety has been published by the scientific journal Plos One:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0006680
26 November 2024
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