Safety and Shelf life by Design

Ensuring the highest food quality and safety

Microbial contaminants are an importantcause of premature food spoilage and may lead to customer complaints, or worse,can threaten the safety of our food. In the past decades, contamination with food pathogens, such asSalmonella,Listeria monocytogenesand pathogenic E. colihave ledto costly recalls, safety incidents and reputation damage.

At the same time, production processes are subject to changes either caused by a change in the supply chain, milder and more sustainable processes, or transition to plant-based product formulations. To ensure the highest quality and safety, processes need continuous assessment of its microbiological hazards and control strategies.

Data-driven Decision Support System

Wageningen Food & Biobased Research provides tailored, expert support to design safe and stable products and processes.

Over the years, we have performed hazard identification studies for many food production chains of both animal and plant-origin. Using this knowledge, we have developed a Decision Support System (DSS) for automated hazard identification and to determine if a food product formulation supports growth of pathogens.

This data-driven DSS can be tailored to your specific needs.

Ongoing projects

In the Food Safety by Design project, we are developing a web-based platform to help food producers identify potential food safety hazards for their products and production processes. This
platform is built on information on hazards collected from studies for plant-and animal-based chains performed previously (including hazard identification studies performed as a knowledge partner for the Dutch Food Safety Authority). The digital tool will also contain side-stream derived ingredients.

The PROSPECT project focusses on the design of mathematical models that predict the growth of Listeria monocytogenes in plant-based foods to aid in the design of safe protein-rich products.