New member funded research projects

Each year, our members decide how we should invest over £2m of their membership fees in research to help their companies, and the food industry in general, to prosper. This year they have selected the following projects to complement 40 or so current ones. They are divided between five themes based on industry needs:

Safety

• Effective control of viruses in the food manufacturing industry
  Will provide data on the effects of product composition, processing and storage on the survival and inactivation of various surrogates.
• Cleaning and disinfection of food factories: a revised practical guide
  Guidance on cleaning and disinfection in the manufacturing process will be updated, based on practical case studies.

Quality and value

• New technologies for food and drink manufacturing
  The focus will be emerging technologies for improving quality and value with feasibility studies on commercially relevant technologies
• Understanding the safe shelf life of foods using advanced microbial profiling
  Microbial specifications will be re-evaluated for a range of chilled products, and the effect that naturally occurring microflora has on the growth of pathogenic microflora will be analysed.
• The impact of sensory substantiation claims on consumers’ purchase decisions
  Will provide insights into if/why sensory claims are seen to be credible, meaningful and valuable, and explore their impact on consumer behaviour.

Nutrition, health and wellbeing

• Calorie reduction and fibre enhancement
  Will provide an understanding of the functionality of fibres, potential new sources of fibre and which fibres perform best in certain products to allow the development of products that appeal.
• Pre-processing to improve natural nutrition and functionality of ingredients
  Will build knowledge of nutrient bioaccessibility and bioavailability to optimise the nutritional value and technical function of food products. It will investigate the effects of processing techniques and demonstrate the benefits of different processes.
• Potential of plant proteins for ingredient and product development
  Techniques to produce protein rich ingredients efficiently (cost and time) will be developed, and their nutritional value and technical performance improved.

Sustainability, resilience and food security

• Technical challenges associated with reducing or replacing single-use plastic packaging within the food and drink industry
  Will explore alternative packaging materials and the technical challenges to reducing/removing packaging, and provide a better understanding of the UK’s recycling infrastructure for single-use plastic packaging.

Skills and knowledge

• Practical control of Listeria during food production
  Sets out to produce an up to date one-stop-shop guideline document on controlling Listeria during food production.
• Blockchain and emerging approaches supporting food safety management systems
  Will investigate different tools, including blockchain, to decide if they are relevant to food safety management, and how they could be used.