Making our food safety control system greener

forthcoming

Food safety is still a challenge considering climate change and growing global population. Human exposure to contaminated food lead to numerous health risks including foodborne and chronic diseases. Natural toxins such as mycotoxins, plant toxins, and phytotoxins, play a significant role in food contamination, causing substantial losses in the agriculture and aquaculture sectors. Additionally, their co-occurrence in food samples together with the potential presence of masked or unexpected toxins can have synergistic and unknown toxic effects, posing emerging risks to human health. Current analytical methods to monitor these contaminants require high consume of hazardous organic solvents and generate significant waste, having a considerable environmental impact. Furthermore, most standard protocols target a limited range of compounds, reducing the scope of the analysis. GreenFOCUS aims to develop a sustainable, green analytical methodology for detecting multiple classes of natural toxins in food and food supplements. The project proposes the use of eco-friendly solvents to replace harmful organic solvents and biodegradable materials to reduce plastic waste. Advanced analytical techniques such as cyclic ion mobility coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry will be explored to reduce total time of analysis and to expand the detection scope using non-target and suspect screening workflows. The development of a new metric tool (Eco-GATE) considering green, white and circular analytical chemistry will allow to assess the greenness and transferability of analytical methods, aiming to develop and implement sustainable methodologies in food analysis. The method will be validated in European reference laboratories and within the food industry to demonstrate its real-word applicability. In general, GreenFOCUS aims to transform food safety systems across public and private sectors, ensuring a safer and more sustainable future for food systems.