On the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, WPO convened UNIDO, FSSC, and Wageningen University and Research to discuss the Sustainable Packaging Assessment Methodology (SusPAM) and explore how packaging decisions can protect food, help prevent avoidable loss, and support broader sustainability goals.
Potential uses include pathogen and chemical hazard detection, food fraud identification, outbreak surveillance, risk forecasting, and regulatory decision-making. Barriers to wider adoption remain, such as data quantity, quality, and accessibility; confidentiality; and transparency.
Organized by a team from Wageningen University and Research, the inaugural AI for Food Safety Conference (AIFS) is set to take place on April 8–9, 2027 in Ede, the Netherlands.
The findings from a pre-competitive, industry–academia research collaboration provide a scientific foundation for discussions on quality standards and risk management in the plant-based dairy-alternative beverage sector.
Wageningen University researchers developed a hybrid machine learning modeling framework that considers crop growth stages, various future scenarios, and a large geographic region. The model predicted deoxynivalenol will present the greatest risk, with coastal countries, the UK, and northern France most affected.
Large-scale recycled manure use—a circular agriculture approach used to combat soil acidification that reduces crop yield—can lead to the accumulation of cadmium in soil, which is then taken up by rice crops, affecting food safety.
Antibodies for highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 (HPAI H5N1) have been detected in a Dutch dairy cow, indicating the animal was infected with the virus.
Wageningen University researchers conducted an experimental evolutionary study to explore the genetic and phenotypic mechanisms that drive the enhanced biofilm formation ability of evolved L. monocytogenes strains, identifying the overexpression of a certain protein as a key contributor.
Despite growing enthusiasm about and application of artificial intelligence (AI) for food safety management and regulatory oversight, the report underscores persistent challenges, the need for robust governance, and other factors to consider for responsible adoption.
The new CompreHensive European Food Safety (CHEFS) database unifies nearly 400 million chemical contaminant analytical results from two decades of EU food safety monitoring activities, enabling the analysis of this previously disparate data. Using their new database, researchers identified food safety trends across Europe between 2000 and 2024.
