Safeguarding The World's Food Supply
Prof Chris Elliott is the forefront of a programme of research of benefit locally but also of significant importance on a global scale. He spearheads a major initiative to develop techniques to safeguard the food supply.
With colleagues at Queen’s University Belfast, and partners across the globe, he is undertaking cutting edge research to develop early warning techniques to detect food contamination issues.
Contamination of our food, both by natural causes and through adulteration, can have catastrophic effects as is borne out by serious incidents within the last few years, such as the dreadful E. coli case in Germany during 2011 where thousands of people fell ill and 35 lost their lives as a result of eating contaminated bean sprouts and the dioxin crisis in Ireland (2009) where all Irish pork across the world were removed from sale; with the pork sector worth in excess of €400m per year, the cost of the recall to the economy was substantial. Constant monitoring and rapid action is required to prevent incidents such as these happening again.
Prof Elliott’s team are developing simple, effective techniques that can be used at the earliest point of entry to the food supply chain to prevent these incidents reoccurring. But, with changes in climate and the need to produce vast quantities of food for the ever increasing world population, he is ever vigilant for new as yet unknown emerging contaminants.
Locally, while the economic climate on these shores is in the doldrums, the agri-food sector is doing very well and out-performing most other industries on this Island. Working together with local industry in the application of his research, Prof Elliott hopes to reinforce the integrity of the food produced locally ensuring our place on the world market for many years to come.
Please visit the following websites to find out more on just some of the projects Prof Elliott is currently involved in –
QSAFFE (link directly to project website, www.qsaffe.eu)
ASSET (link directly to http://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/ASSET/)
ASSET 2014 (link directly to http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/ASSET2014/)
Further information on this and other stories is published in Queen’s University Belfast publication ‘The DNA of Innovation, Volume Two’ (direct link to http://www.qub.ac.uk/home/media/Media,353491,en.pdf)
