QACCP

Contact persons at the University of Kassel

Duration of project

June 2007 - December 2009

Coordinator

Priv.-Doz. Dr. Johannes Kahl
Dept. of Organic Food Quality and Food Culture
University of Kassel

Short summary

Consumer demand for healthy, safe and high quality food is increasing. Against this background, the demand for organically grown food has been growing rapidly. The quality of food can be defined in many different ways by physical, chemical and sensory variables. Organic farming contains the whole food chain from field to fork. Whereas the EU-regulation 2091/92 describes the details of organic farming, only a few processing techniques are defined, which shows the need for detailed improvement. Next to the food safety (hazard) in food processing the quality aspect is becoming more and more important. An analytical system to optimise the process needs to be established (Quality Analysis of Critical Control Points). The proposal will put these different aspects together following one selected product from "field to fork". The overall objective of the project is to optimise organic production and processing in order to increase health promoting aspects in consumer products. The approach will be a chain analysis approach which addresses the link between farm and fork and backwards from fork to farm. The objective is to improve product related quality management in farming (towards testing food authenticity) and processing (towards food authenticity and sustainable processes). The carrot is chosen as the model vegetable since it is common for the involved SMEs and is processed for baby food; hence the results will be relevant for other vegetables and organic food in general as well. The analysis of the whole food chain regarding the aspects food safety, sensory quality and health gives important information for the product development in the future to better reach the consumers expectations on organic food: environmental friendly, healthy, tasty and safe. The project creates a European network of research institutes from different disciplines and partners from practice which will be a contact point for future projects in the organic sector.

The task of our institute is to investigate consumer awareness, expectations and attitudes on the quality of organic processed baby food with vegetables.