Projects in the area of food safety where HAH is the leading institution
NATIONAL FOOD CONSUMPTION STUDY OF INFANTS AND YOUNG CHILDREN 2017-2021
SUPPORT TO NATIONAL DIETARY SURVEYS IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE EU MENU METHODOLOGY – THE CHILDREN SURVEY, INCLUDING SUBJECTS FROM THREE MONTHS UP TO 9 YEARS OLD
Croatian Food Agency (HAH), with financial support of European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), is implementing the first national study which aims are to collect data on food consumption of children from three months up to nine years old. The study will be implemented in the period from 2017. to 2021, on a representative sample for the Republic of Croatia of this age population, which is a minimum of 2000 respondents. The study will be based on EFSA EU Menu methodology, in order to obtain quality data at an individual level that will be comparable with data from other EU countries. The study is divided into three phases. In the first phase, implementation of the EU Menu Methodology is planned at the national level in order to encompass the specificities of food consumption habits. Within this phase, the first national software for collecting and data analysis will be created, after which a pilot study will be conducted to test the set methodology. In the second phase, the survey will be conducted on the field covering all four seasons by completing food diary of two nonconsecutive days, in order to cover the differences in food consumption conditioned by the availability of seasonal foodstuffs and lifestyle. In the final phase, processing of data collected, validation and forwarding of data to EFSA in the default format via the Data Collection Framework (DCF) platform is planned. After additional validation of the data in EFSA, the data will be published in the comprehensive European Food Consumption Database, the so-called EFSA Comprehensive European Food Consumption Database.
At the end of the project, the food consumption data will be published on the HAH web site and will be available upon request at custom formats and levels of aggregation to all interested parties.
The project objective is to gather data on food consumption, general sociodemographic data, anthropometric data, data on the quantity and frequency of food and beverage consumption, nutritional supplements and data of food consumption of children intolerant and / or allergic to certain food.
Project will last for 4,5 years (01/2017 – 06/2021)
Pilot project on the implementation of SSD2 in the frame of the electronic transmission of harmonised data collection of analytical results to EFSA
The objective of the project is to design, develop, implement and test data extraction process and to define transfer of data, for a chosen domain, to Croatian Food Agency data warehouse and to validate and transmit the data from Croatian Food Agency data warehouse, for a chosen domain, to EFSA in the format required by EFSA (SSD2-XML). Through this pilot project, EFSA will receive feedback from the EU Member States in which the model is being tested, about the benefits and disadvantages of introducing the SSD2 model at national level with the aim of improving it and at the end of its implementation.
Implementation and testing of electronic submission in XML format of zoonoses, antimicrobial resistance and food-borne outbreak data for Croatia
European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA) and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) have an important role in the area of collection and annual reporting of data on zoonosis, zoonotic agents, antimicrobial resistance, food-borne outbreaks and animal population in the EU, in accordance with the Directive 2003/99 /EC.
A move from aggregated to sample and isolate based data collection is taking place for antimicrobial resistance and prevalence data under the framework of EFSA’s data roadmap. The Standard Sample Description (SSD2) model for food and feed will be EFSA’s standard for transmission of prevalence data from EU Member States to EFSA. EFSA supports Member States in their move to the more automatic data transfer in eXtensible Markup Language (XML) format, with the aim to improve data quality and usability.
Within the scope of EFSA’s support to EU Member States, project contract was signed between EFSA and Croatian consortium composed of Ministry of Agriculture, as consortium leader, and Ministry of Health as consortium member, in cooperation with Croatian Veterinary Institute, Croatian Institute of Public Health, Croatian Agricultural Agency and Croatian Food Agency as project manager. Contracted budget was 75.000,00 €.
Projects in the area of food safety where HAH is participant
Aquatic microbial ecology as an indicator of the health status of the environment – AQUAHEALTH
The majority of studies in aquatic microbial ecology focus on the separate segments of aquatic ecosystem. Our project proposes comprehensive study of bacterial community within water column, sediment and fish as indicator of the aquatic environmental health status and its potential implications to human health. The project seeks to understand the genetic diversity of bacterial isolates in the aquatic environment, the relationships between environmental isolates, those from the healthy fish and from fish with clinical symptoms. These data are necessary to predict the origin of disease and spreading pathways of bacterial indicators of water quality, as well as potentially pathogenic bacteria, both for fish and humans.
PROteINSECT is a three-year project (2013 – 2016) funded by the European Commission. Project explores the feasibility of using proteins derived from insects in animal feed. There are 12 project partners from 7 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia, the Food and Environment Agency (FERA) of the United Kingdom.
The Croatian Food Agency has been involved in conducting a survey on consumer perception of animal feed. The results of this survey, as well as the results of all project partners’ surveys, will be presented to members of the European Parliament and the legislators and it will affect European policy on the availability of food security in the future.
Total Diet Studies (TDS) allow getting information on real dietary exposure to food contaminants consumption (heavy metals, mycotoxins, POPs…) and estimating chronic exposure to pesticide residues in food and food additives intake. TDS consider total exposure from whole diets and are based on food contamination as consumed rather than contamination from raw commodities, thus ensuring a realistic exposure measure.
TDS facilitate risk assessment (RA) and health monitoring (HM). Some EU Member States (MS) and Candidate Countries (CC) have no TDS programme or use various methods to collect data, which were not examined yet to tell whether they are comparable or not. This is of interest for EFSA or WHO-FAO. Similarly it is important to harmonise methods to assess dietary exposure risks in MS, CC and at the European level compared with other world regions.
Project Agricultural Contribution Towards Clean Environment and Healthy Food (AGRI-CONTO-CLEEN) contributed to increasing number of successful farm producers, to increased food quality in conventional agricultural production, to decreased production costs based on environmentally friendly approach in agricultural production. It resulted in raised regional capacity in environmentally friendly agricultural production by joining of new farmers into action. Aslo, project incrased knowledge and public awareness on food produced in environmentally friendly wayt through dissemination, based on website, brochures annd flyers which resulted with farmers awarding qualification certificate for environmentally friendly food production. All of this improved food health and food security was a significant contribution in cross-border area, because consumers had greater market offer of high quality food.
Overall objective: Agricultural contribution to better, higher level environmental protection and creation of management system for producing higher quality food and agricultural products.
Specific objective: Establishment of sustainable control system of pollution from agriculture and enhancing professional skills of farmers. Increasing community awareness of agricultural impact on environmental protection and healthy food production.
Applicant: Faculty of Agriculture in Osijek
Partners: Croatian food Agency, Osijek, Croatia; High school of agriculture and food technology “Stevan Petrović Brile”, Ruma, Serbia; Faculty of Agriculture in Novi Sad, Serbia; Regional development agency Srem, Ruma, Serbia
Duration: 22. 04. 2013. – 21.04.2015.
Main objective of the project is a sustainable cooperation of the education and other institutions of Croatia and Hungary in order to promote eco-tourism and to develop database and efficient education program for the economic sector involved. The knowledge-based development work is supported by 5 activities in the implementation of the project: research, workshops, study tours, education/training and electronic platform development. The scope of the activities includes joint training programs and harmonisation of curriculum especially in relevant fields of the development of the (environmental actions, eco-tourism).
The overall objective of the project is to develop a joint, cross-border platform for the development of the regions’ tourisms by building on the enterprises.
Projects in the area of food safety supported by HAH
The primary strategic objective of PROMISE is to improve and increase the integration, collaboration and knowledge transfer between the new member states, old member states (EU15) and candidate countries through a collaborative workplan of exchange of expertise and regional training and dissemination actions, to tackle common food safety threats.
A further strategic objective is to integrate stakeholders like public health authorities and national food safety authorities from the old and new member countries in order to ensure the exploitation of research results into standardisation and harmonisation efforts.
The overall objective of the BASELINE project is to provide harmonised and validated sampling strategies, structured as International standard (ex. ISO), to support the European policies in food safety and to be suitable for food producers, in order to collect comparable data to improve quantitative risk analysis of selected biological and chemical agents.
The major output of the project is to generate new knowledge on sampling schemes for risk assessment by using a mathematical approach for different groups of food products as seafood, eggs and egg products, fresh meats, milk and dairy products and plant products. The project results will be translated in clear recommendations to the EC and end users and they will have a significant impact on protecting human and veterinary health.
