About SAFE
European Association for Food Safety
The SAFE consortium ....
is the international association of scientific institutes and universities who work together in the area of food safety related sciences. We want to stimulate the public debate on food safety and we can do that unhampered by links to government and industry because all members have the full right to publish in the public interest.
The SAFE consortium is targeting to be the leading group in food safety sciences. With its current 14 members the consortium already today covers very widely the field of food safety and related areas.
The target is to have members in most if not all of the EU member states, the candidate members and in the associated countries. The expertise is of course with the members, institutes and universities, but the consortium acts as a facilitator and a co-ordinator of different activities.
OUR mISSION ....
The mission of the SAFE consortium is to stimulate the public debate in Europe on the scientific aspects of food safety, by making available up-to-date knowledge from institutes whose scientific integrity is guaranteed by the unlimited right to publish in the public interest.
Our member organisations work together to develop and promote interdisciplinary research projects and partnerships. This requires a strategic assessment of research trends in food safety and a high degree of interaction with the European Commission and its institutions, European and national food safety authorities and academia.
The products and services of the consortium as a whole can be consulting activities, larger projects and programmes within the Framework Programmes and participations in the ERA Net Scheme and in Technology Platforms. The consortium furthermore organises (series of) seminars and workshops with related publications or position papers on food safety issues. The Consortium organises an International Congress on food safety sciences once every two years.
The geographical ‘operating area’ of the SAFE consortium includes all of the European Union, including the ten new member states that joined the EU in 2004, the Candidate Member States and Countries (Iceland, Norway, Switserland etc.) which are fully active within the scientific framework programmes of the Union.
OUR Scope...
In accordance with its remit, the activities developed by the SAFE consortium will be confined to food safety sciences, interpreted in its broadest sense to include agricultural inputs and the complete chains of food and feed production, processing, packaging, transportation, distribution, retail, consumption and consumer research. In scientific terms it includes microbiology (classical, predictive and molecular) including viruses and TSE’s, molecular genetics, genomics, toxicology (chemical, environmental, veterinary pharmaceutical and biological), existing and novel food (preservation) technologies, exposure assessment, risk evaluation and consumer sciences.