MoniQA International Conference highlights impact of food safety on consumers and hosts official launch of new MoniQA Association for global food safety

(Vienna, October 12, 2011) The 3^rd MoniQA International Conference (September 27-29, Varna, Bulgaria) brought together more than 150 participants from around the globe to discuss food safety issues and their impact on the consumer. The event also hosted the official launch event of the MoniQA Association, a non-profit-distributing organisation dedicated to collaborative research promoting a more secure and safer food supply.

The 3^rd MoniQA International Conference, held in Varna, Bulgaria (September 27-29, 2011) brought together more than 150 international stakeholders from research, industry, authorities and consumer representatives to discuss “food safety and consumer protection”. Sessions focused on risk, understanding and choice, food safety, food security and climate change, socio-economic impact of food safety regulations, allergens, emerging issues in food (such as nanotechnology) chemical contaminants and mycotoxins, research undertaken by young MoniQA scientists and food safety education curricula around the globe; all under the umbrella of the impact on consumers.

The conference also hosted the official launch event of the new MoniQA Association, a non-profit-distributing organisation dedicated to collaborative research promoting a more secure and safer food supply, which will continue the activities of the project. In early August 2011 the association was incorporated as a non profit association (a so-called “Verein”) under Austrian law. Since then, most of the partners of the distributing original MoniQA Network of Excellence consortium (2007-2012) have joined the MoniQA Association and several new members have joined the Association prior to its first MoniQA Association General Assembly, which took place in Varna on 29 September 2011. To date nearly 40 institutions from 18 countries from 5 continents have become members of the MoniQA Association.

The 3^rd MoniQA International Conference featured a wide array of speakers from food safety researchers, socio-economists, regulators, representatives from food industry and retail as well as consumer representatives from around the globe.  The event follows up on earlier, highly-successful MoniQA Conferences in Rome (2008) and Krakow (2010) with inter- and cross-disciplinary activities bridging the concerns of citizens, food science and the European economy.

The conference included table-top sessions with hands-on demonstration showcasing MoniQA activities and results. A poster session highlighted selected scientific research, with a poster award ceremony at the closing ceremony of the conference. The poster prizes were awarded to: (1^st) Sine Yener (HCTU, TR) for Evaluation of a commercial ELISA assay for the detection of yellow mustard in food matrices and performance characteristics; (2^nd) Dorota Piasecka-Kwiatkowska (NFNI, PL) for Gluten contents in beer and consumer awareness in Poland; and (3^rd) Chen Jinyao (SCU, CN) for The status and challenges of toxicological evaluation of several Chinese herbs.

Other EU-funded projects, such as Veg-i-Trade, also contributed to the scientific content of the conference. 

For more information about the new MoniQA Association please visit http://association.moniqa.org/

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