The Catalyse Project: catalysing food safety innovations through a community of practice

Contaminated food causes 600M cases of foodborne diseases and 420k deaths every year, resulting in 33M years of healthy lives lost, and this is possibly an underestimation. Food safety is a critical aspect of the food sector to protect public health, as it is essential to ensure that the food we consume is free from harmful contaminants. Despite recent advances in scientific research and innovation, several barriers hinder the widespread adoption of food safety improvements, such as a lack of collaboration and information sharing among stakeholders, complex regulations, and high costs of implementation. Overcoming these barriers requires a coordinated and interdisciplinary effort among industry, regulators, researchers, and innovators to identify food safety priorities and translate them into practical innovative solutions. Therefore, the increase in collaboration among stakeholders can help drive the adoption of innovative technologies and practices. To address these key challenges, CATALYSE, a European project, seeks to catalyse scientific innovations into practical food safety actions by creating a Community of Practice (CoP). A CoP is a group of people and organizations with a shared interest in a particular domain who collaborate to exchange knowledge, solve problems, and advance innovation. The CATALYSE CoP aims to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing between food safety actors to accelerate the adoption and scaling-up of innovative practices and technologies. This contributes to a more resilient, sustainable, and equitable community, meeting the needs of all stakeholders, from “farm2fork”, with the common goal of ensuring food safety. Educational tools will be developed to fulfill stakeholders needs and the active dissemination of new knowledge and innovative solutions generated by the scientific and industry communities will be promoted. Besides, by creating effective online channels to connect knowledge and innovation ecosystems in food safety, CATALYSE will connect stakeholders across the food system, including regulators, industry professionals, researchers, and non-governmental organizations. This collaborative online platform will facilitate dialogue and collaboration across the whole food system, leading to win-win solutions for all stakeholders involved. Through its focus on building a strong CoP, CATALYSE will drive the transfer and uptake of food safety knowledge and innovation, ensuring that cutting-edge research translates into real improvements in food safety practices. CATALYSE will not generate science by itself or promote specific proprietary solutions: it will be a common online place where all the actors of the food chain can meet and define together the needs and possibilities that innovation can either answer and/or offer. We invite you to join our CoP to connect with peers, access cutting-edge resources, and contribute to the development of safe and sustainable food systems. By becoming a member of CATALYSE CoP, you will have access to consolidated updates on food safety, all in one place.