Programme

DRAFT PROGRAMME NOW AVAILABLE - DOWNLOAD HERE (Status 12 May 2010)

In particular an in-depth look will be provided at the following thematic areas:

• Session 1 – Opening session
• Session 2 – Food Safety Standards
  Food safety regulations – and food standard in primis – affect society in a much broader way than ‘simply’ reducing food risks. They influence firm costs (hence consumer prices), international trade (especially from developing countries) and possibly even the quality of what we eat. Thus, it is crucial that any trade-off is properly taken into account when calibrating food safety policies and social sciences have much to say in this direction. This session covers the issues and the methods for a proper assessment of the diverse societal implications of food standards and other forms of food safety regulations.
• Session 3 – Mycotoxins & Phycotoxins
  Mycotoxins and phycotoxins are biocontaminants of food (and feed) that can cause adverse effects in man and animals. Currently there are a lot of developments in the EU, both in the mycotoxin and phycotoxin area, e.g. dealing with risk assessment, analytical methodology and legislation. The session will particularly focus on issues related with mycotoxins in food. The speakers in the session will give attention not only to technical topics of current concern in the EU and Turkey, but cost-benefit analysis in the mycotoxin regulatory area will also be highlighted.
• Session 4 – Food Allergens
• Session 5 – Chemical Contaminants
  This session will focus lessons that can be learned from past incidents involving chemicals in food. What have past incidents cost in economic terms and how can we learn from these in order to improve consumer protection from further events, either by avoiding them altogether or by implementation of swift follow up action. The importance of good methods and appropriate validation to be applied to the management of these risks will also be addressed.
• Session 6 – Microbiological Contaminants
• Poster Presentations, Best Poster award
• Session 7 – Food Additives
  This session will focus on occurrence and new trends in the analysis of certain food processing toxicants-specifically acrylamide and trans-fatty acids. Issues arising from the increasing use of natural as alternative to artificial colourants, as well as the methods for the analysis of natural food colourants will also be addressed. Furthermore issues on legislative regulations and food safety control systems in China affecting trading to EU and third countries, will be covered.
• Session 8 – Emerging technology for food safety assessment (BioCop, CONffIDENCE)
  The joint session will disseminate project results of the BioCop project (www.biocop.org – an FP6 Integrated Project “New Technologies to Screen Multiple Chemical Contaminants in Food” ) and discuss recent developments in the ongoing project CONffIDENCE (www.conffidence.eu – an FP7 project “Safer food through rapid and cost-efficient tests for chemical contaminants in the food chain”)
• Session 9 – Food Authenticity
The food authenticity session gathers experts from different backgrounds to address a topic which is becoming more and more important for the European and worldwide consumer with the aim to present recent research advancements, to identify any gaps and needs and to offer legislators, control authorities and any interested parties, objective, validated and harmonised means to measure food authenticity attributes.