(MENAFN- Emirates News Agency (WAM))
ROME, 10th June, 2017 (WAM) -- The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, are exploring mobile tools, through a joint project to combat food fraud and contamination, which results in a loss of billions annually around the world and poses a serious threat to public health.
Traditional and professional laboratories have the ability to quickly detect different types of food fraud and contamination, however, such a capacity is limited in many countries and is not portable, by nature.
The FAO-IAEA initiative aims to fill this gap.
"The goal is to make low-cost devices and methods available for food authorities to use directly in the streets and markets, particularly in developing countries," said Simon Kelly, a Food Safety Specialist at the Joint FAO-IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, who is leading the project.
The German-funded project seeks to build on the opportunities created by advances in field-deployable analytical equipment. This includes the adaptation of ion mobility spectrometry a nuclear-based technology used by border police agencies to detect illicit drugs and explosives to perform point-of-use screening tests to check for adulterants, contaminants and moulds in food.
"The development of high-performance, hand-held computing devices, such as smartphones, has enabled a new generation of instruments that can be used outside the traditional laboratory environment," added Iain Darby, Head of the IAEA's Nuclear Science and Instrumentation Laboratory.
The project will also develop methods to use such hand-held devices to test food authenticity, given that labels and paperwork, which countries often depend on, can be easily forged.
"We need to rely on science to provide assurances," said one of the project participants, Jose Almirall, Director of the International Forensic Research Institute at Florida International University in the United States.
Another participant, Syahidah Muhammad, Head of the Stable Isotope Laboratory at the Universiti Sains Malaysia, pointed out that many food fraud cases remain "hearsay" due to a lack of proof.
Portable tools and standard operating procedures will allow authorities to respond faster at critical checkpoints, and protect the food supply chain from being inundated with tainted products, she noted.
The project will initially focus on devising methods to quickly analyse milk powder and vegetable oil, as these two commodities are particularly vulnerable to adulteration. In many countries, gutter oil the use of waste cooking vegetable oil, recovered and recycled back into the food chain, has raised an alarm.
The FAO-IAEA project was kicked off with a meeting in the Austrian capital, Vienna, last month, and the first results are expected to be unveiled within the next two years. The initiative is part of the two organisations' efforts to help their member states with nuclear and related techniques for science-based solutions to improve global food security and sustainable agricultural development.
The countries participating in the programme include Austria, Belgium, China, India, Malaysia, Morocco, the Russian Federation, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Sweden, United Kingdom, Uganda and the United States.
WAM/Tariq/Mahmoud
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