Quality analysis of critical control points within the whole food chain and their impact on food quality, safety and health QACCP

Summary

QACCP is one of the eight transnational research projects that were initated under the ERA-Net project CORE Organic (see www.coreorganic.org). Consumer demand for healthy, safe and high quality food is increasing. Against this background, the demand for organic food has been rapidly growing. But health effects and qualities of organic products need to be assured. The objective of this project is to improve product related quality management in farming and processing.
The project "Quality analysis of critical control points within the whole food chain and their impact on food quality, safety and health QACCP" will investigate the optimization of production and processing of organic food. This will be done in order to improve food safety, as well as quality and health promoting aspects. The work will be undertaken using a chain analysis approach, which addresses the links between “farm to fork” and backwards from “fork to farm”.
The carrot is used as the model vegetable because it is a common vegetable that is also processed, e.g. for baby food. Therefore the results for carrots will be relevant for other vegetables and organic food.
The specific objectives are to:
- Identify and define critical and essential product quality parameters useful to optimize organic food quality;
- Compare products from different farming practices (conventional and organic
- Test the performance of the method “Quality Analysis Critical Control Point” (QACCP);
- Test the impact of different processing techniques on product quality and safety;
- Test the impact of organic food on health.