Deadline: 06-Oct-21
European Commission is calling for proposals for Identification, Assessment, and Management of Existing and Emerging Food Safety Issues.
Scope
- Food-borne diseases are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality, and a significant impediment to socio-economic development worldwide, but the full extent and burden of unsafe food, and especially the burden arising from chemical and biological hazards, is still largely unknown.
Focus Areas
Successful proposals are expected to address both of the following areas (area A and area B):
- Area A
- develop methods for early identification and monitoring of drivers of (re)emerging food safety risk and threats (e.g. global environmental changes, globalisation, technological innovations, policy changes, changes in values, perceptions and sensitivity, change in economic models, etc.);
- develop methods and devices for the characterisation of emerging risks, with the aim of anticipating and possibly mitigating/preventing impacts (preparedness);
- develop educational material/curricula to help strengthen existing food safety risk analysis teaching with an inter-/trans-disciplinary systems dimension;
- engage authorities and the general public throughout Europe in early warning and the identification of emerging risks through a coordinated citizen science approach, and food safety awareness-raising efforts;
- develop guidance on how to integrate food safety considerations in the design phase of innovations such as circular economy, by identifying possible emerging risks, in liaison with relevant initiatives that would benefit from the results;
- develop methods to guarantee food safety in local food systems from farm to fork, in particular in small-scale businesses, and local cooperatives; and
- develop holistic risk-benefit assessment methods and tools, and adapt these for use in a regulatory setting.
- Area B
- improve knowledge on the persistence of pathogens (including viruses) in food matrices and food processing environments for improved microbe control;
- develop data, indicators and tools to address and tackle the risks associated with new and food-borne pathogens (including viruses);
- develop and validate detection methods for new hazards and develop methods and devices for early identification of risks for food safety and threats;
- develop more robust and responsive models for food safety crisis management, taking into account socio-economic and environmental factors;
- analyse drivers of risks (globalisation, urbanisation, environmental degradation, climate change, etc.) to support the long-term anticipation and possible prevention of emerging risks; and
- develop scientific evidence to support assessment of the risk posed to susceptible human subpopulations (including gender in the research context) and ecosystems and the underlying risk drivers.
Funding Information
Grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000 except for:
- public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
- cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (lowvalue grant).
Expected Outcomes
Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:
- reduced risks from biological and chemical hazards throughout the food system;
- administrations’ ability to anticipate and mitigate emerging food safety risks, capacity and expertise for risk assessment activities including holistic risk assessment (risks in combination with benefits) and best-fitting control measures for biological and chemical hazards across the food system;
- improved support for food systems regulatory science (integrated risk-benefit assessment, cost-benefit assessment) through robust holistic risk assessment;
- improved use of ‘big data’ to predict and prevent emerging food related threats; and
- long-term anticipation and prevention of emerging risks for food and feed safety, plant, soil and animal health, and nutritional quality through better trend tracking and characterisation systems.
Eligibility Criteria
- Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from non-associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call topic.
- A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
- To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions;
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States;
- eligible non-EU countries:
- countries associated to Horizon Europe
- low- and middle-income countries.
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/3AAaZXg