Teagasc and Musgrave have come together to fund a four-year PhD to ensure safer food supply chains.
The four-year project will be awarded by the Cork University Business School at UCC aims to protect the integrity of the Irish agri-food system.
It also hopes to respond proactively to the challenges presented by the growing complexity of global food supply chains.
The project will focus on identifying factors that lead to breaches of food integrity, understanding the motivation of perpetrators and highlighting gaps in policy, legislation and technology.
Ensuring Good Practice
The solutions to these findings will be designed for deployment at company, industry and food system levels through consultation with relevant stakeholders
The PhD project will be co-supervised by Dr Maeve Henchion, Teagasc, and Dr Seamus O’Reilly, UCC, with advisory input from Dr John Spink of the Food Fraud Initiative, Michigan State University, USA.
Dr Henchion said: “Ultimately, this project will provide the knowledge base to ensure that Ireland has the appropriate policies and strategies in place to ensure that all supply chain actors and consumers are protected from any potential deliberate adulteration of food products”.
“We can learn a lot from examples of good practice internationally but we need to understand the context to adapt them for use in Ireland. This project will help us to do this. It will help us to ensure we are not reinventing the wheel,” added Dr Seamus O’Reilly.
Musgrave & MSU
The project builds on an ongoing programme of collaborative work involving Teagasc, UCC, Musgrave and Michigan State University.
Musgrave has worked with MSU since 2014 in the practical application of food vulnerability assessments that identify and address possible supply chain fraud risks. This work has enhanced authenticity and confidence in the products supplied to Musgrave’s retailers and consumers.
Commenting on the initiative, Ray Bowe, Head of Food Safety & Quality at Musgrave said, “We are proud of the support we give Irish producers and are committed to protecting the integrity of food produced in Ireland for both domestic and international consumers. Through our Food Authenticity Programme, we are delighted to collaborate with Teagasc, UCC and Michigan State University and look forward to supporting the project.”
Musgrave is a part of The Leaders’ Group on Sustainability, a collaboration of CEOs from Ireland’s top companies dedicated to addressing the most pressing sustainability priorities in Ireland, as well as future opportunities. One of the first actions announced by the Group is the Low Carbon Pledge
© 2018 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Article by Aidan O’Sullivan. Click subscribe to sign up for the Checkout print edition.
