Promoting food safety through a new integrated risk analysis approach for foods

September 2005

Food safety is the topic of a four year research project in which 33 leading organisations worldwide are participating. South Africa is the only participating African partner and one of only two non-European countries. The Safe Foods project is coordinated by the RIKILT Institute of Food Safety, part of Wageningen UR in the Netherlands.

Why this research?
Recent food safety incidents and the introduction of genetically modified foods in Europe have reduced consumer confidence in the food supply chain, often out of all proportion to the real risk. This project addresses the issue of how consumer confidence can be restored and strengthened.

What does the research hope to achieve?
Researchers hope to determine, for example, whether the different agricultural production systems, traditional high-input agriculture, lowinput production as carried out by small-scale farmers, and cultivation of genetically modified crops as food, carry different risks. They also hope to determine whether the globalisation of trade may lead to new risks with a negative impact on human health and the environment, for instance, the spread of new virulent pathogens or antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains. It will look at new approaches to evaluate the cumulative effects of contaminants and natural toxins through, for example, toxicity models; at ways of incorporating public concerns into food safety issues; and what changes are needed at institutional structures in an improved risk analysis scenario.

South African researchers' contribution:
Molecular biologists, analytical scientists and plant pathologists at the CSIR have been joined by research peers at the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) and the University of Pretoria (UP) to research the two commercially-important crops that have been selected, namely potatoes (the fourth most important world food crop) and maize (the third most planted field crop in the world).

They are investigating the plants' metabolic profiles, derived from the chemical reactions that occur during synthesis and breakdown, as well as the variations in the proteome (the total complement of proteins) produced.

This will be done for plants showing "natural" variations, somaclonal variations (e.g. through tissue culture procedures) and genetically modified organisms; for plant materials produced under different production systems; and for plants with fungal or bacterial contamination in comparison with uninfected plants.

"From a South African perspective, we are particularly interested in the results of nutritional comparisons of crops farmed in a high-input agricultural production system as opposed to low-input small-holder farming," says CSIR biotechnology specialist Professor Jane Morris, who also heads up the African Centre for Gene Technologies, a joint venture between the CSIR and the University of Pretoria.

She says in addition to the potential value of the research outcomes to which South Africa will have access, the opportunity for South African scientists to interact with the world's best researchers in this domain, is invaluable. In addition to the funding received from the EU there has been a significant investment by South Africa's Department of Science and Technology, first through availing seed funding for meetings and networking that led to the CSIR joining the consortium, and subsequently through a financial commitment to the project.