METROFOOD-RI is a pan-European Research Infrastructure (RI) that aims to promote scientific excellence in the field of food quality and safety. It provides high-quality metrology services in food and nutrition, comprising an important cross-section of highly interdisciplinary and interconnected fields throughout the food value chain, including agri-food, sustainable development, food safety, quality, traceability and authenticity, environmental safety, and human health.

The RI consists of a physical infrastructure (P-RI) and an electronic infrastructure (e-RI) to coordinate and integrate existing networks of plants, laboratories, experimental fields/farms for crop production/animal breeding, small-scale plants for food processing and storage, kitchen-labs for food preparation. The e-RI will make available an access platform to share and integrate knowledge and data on metrological tools for food analysis, focusing on food composition, nutritional contents, levels of contaminants and markers. METROFOOD-PP started in December 2019 and ended May 2022.

Steps for implementation

METROFOOD-RI was cited as an emerging project in the ESFRI Roadmap 2016 and completed its Early Phase upon the EU European Union (European Union)-funded PROMETROFOOD project in 2017.  The overall aim of METROFOOD-PP project was to bring METROFOOD-RI to the level of a legally, financially and technically mature pan-European research infrastructure, ready-to-implementation and ready-to-operation. After completion of the preparatory phase, the implementation phase follows. More information on the METROFOOD website. 

Consortium

20 Beneficiaries and 28 linked third parties from 18 countries participate in the METROFOOD-PP project. ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, coordinate the project. In the Netherlands, RIVM and Wageningen Research (with Wageningen Food Safety Research and Biometrics) participate in METROFOOD-PP.  

Role of RIVM

RIVM contributed mostly to activities related to the e-RI. Dr Doctor (Doctor) Marga Ocké coordinated the project at RIVM, where multiple Centres were involved: Centre for Safety of Substances and Products, Centre for Nutrition, Prevention and Health Services, Centre for Zoonoses and Environmental Microbiology.  At the end of METROFOOD-PP, RIVM decided not to play an active role in the implementation phase of METROFOOD-RI.

Funding

This project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871083.