Project

Call for Partners | D-RISK – Data-driven RISK evaluation for Food Safety

To protect consumer health, food manufacturers are obliged by law to implement a food safety plan. Preparing this plan requires expert and science-based knowledge on potential food safety hazards and effective control measures. For companies, access and implementation of recent scientific insights can be challenging. Food safety incidents can affect the whole sector; therefore, a joint effort is needed. In D-Risk, Wageningen University & Research (WUR) together with consortium partners, will build a data-driven quantitative tool to assess product safety.

Food production is constantly evolving, for example driven by the introduction of new ingredients in circular economies, consumer trends, resource scarcity or change in geographical origin of ingredients. Besides, regulatory changes may require reformulation of existing products. D-RISK aims to develop a data-driven quantitative tool to support companies with their food safety plan. The tool will help food producers to evaluate and manage food safety risks by using science-based data and knowledge from microbiological and chemical experts of Wageningen Food & Biobased Research and Wageningen Food Safety Research.  

WUR has developed previously a user-friendly tool to identify chemical and microbiological hazards relevant based on product ingredients, processing and storage conditions. In the D-Risk project, an improved version of the tool will be developed to support companies with their food safety plan by introducing: 

  • Quantitative analysis of microbiological and chemical hazards
  • Suggesting minimal conditions for processing and storage to ensure safety
  • Impact of the geographical origin of ingredients

The aim is to make a highly customizable tool, which can be applicable to many different food production processes. The tool will be tailored to the partners’ process chain and needs. We aim to create a flexible, user-friendly and efficient tool to help food producers evaluate and manage food safety risks more precisely by leveraging data-driven insights based on scientific knowledge such as literature, RASFF database, outbreak reports, expert opinions and reports. The tool will provide food producing companies easy access to most recent insights on factors affecting on food safety.

Partners 

For D-Risk, we want to connect with food producing companies that want to collaborate with us on development of a user-friendly tool that supports with their food safety plan.