Blue Paper 6th Edition
#SaferFoodBetterHealth
World Food Safety Day is an annual celebration which draws attention and inspires action to help prevent, detect and manage food-borne risks.
As a company deeply rooted in food safety, World Food Safety Day is a truly important day in our calendar. This is why we have chosen today to announce the launch of the 6th edition of our Blue Paper, a comprehensive resource designed to highlight key food safety trends, issues and perspectives.
With this in mind, we took the opportunity to interview Samim Saner, Corporate Scientific Director, to provide some insight into the importance of the Blue Paper, as well as what we can expect in this year’s edition.
What is the purpose of the blue paper? / Why was it created? And how can this tool be used by food industry professionals?
[SS] The Blue paper is a comprehensive resource summarizing scientific, regulatory and technical data for the most relevant food categories and contaminants in a visual way, with key metrics and mappings.
The purpose of the Blue Paper is to provide key support to the Food Industry for the risk assessment of food products and raw materials.
What is new in this edition?
[SS] The 2022 edition of the Blue Paper includes some new topics in terms of contaminants such as PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) and Marine Biotoxins. Moreover we have new additional matrices such as Novel Foods and Process water in the new edition.
How many people are collaborating in it?
[SS] 26 people worked in the preparation of this edition of the Blue Paper. The next Blue Paper will be more global, meaning there will be more of our worldwide team working for the preparation of the next version, next edition.
What are the links between food safety & sustainability?
[SS] It is about ‘Sustainable food systems’ which basically aim at achieving food and nutrition security and healthy diets while limiting negative environmental impacts. The negative environmental impacts are responsible for food safety hazards. For example, Climate change. It is likely to drive both the emergence of new hazards and increase the exposure to known hazards. This includes pathogens, molds and mycotoxins, marine biotoxins, veterinary drugs and pesticides residues.
How can Blue Paper help the food industry to anticipate future challenges?
[SS] One of the most important and interesting chapters of the Blue Paper is the Future Challenges chapter. This chapter aims at highlighting food safety hazards which are pointed out by food safety agencies. The work here is mainly based on our scientific watch of a wide variety of official reports predominantly from Europe and North America. In this chapter of the Blue Paper you can also find chemistry and microbiology risk mappings to illustrate and classify new topics.