New UK Food Safety Network to tackle £9 billion food poisoning challenge

8 Jun 2022

Food poisoning is a major health challenge that costs the UK up to £9 billion each year. To help tackle the problem, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have invested £1.6m into a new Food Safety Network, hosted by the Quadram Institute

The UK Food Safety Network will connect food industry, food and health policymakers and academia to collaboratively pursue shared research priorities that will protect the UK from foodborne hazards. The Network will serve as an innovation hub to coordinate and fund cross-sectoral research and training activities that address current and emerging challenges.

The Network's objectives are to:

• assemble a community of UK food producers, food policy makers and scientific researchers who collectively can take robust actions toward improving food safety
• identify areas of research need and opportunity that, in the view of food stakeholders and network members, will have meaningful impacts on UK food safety
• coordinate new collaborative research activities that will promote the application of science towards the food safety challenges identified by our food system community
• host training promoting skills development, interoperability and relationship-building between our food system community
• translate the knowledge generated within the Network to food safety stakeholders, and to upcycle existing information and technologies relevant to food safety that have not yet been applied more broadly