Food and consumer safety

We are working with authentication, verification of traceability information, safe production of seafood and seafood quality.

Authentication

Fraud, falsifications and mislabelling whereby a lower value product is labelled and sold as a more expensive authentic one has existed for long time and seafood is no exception, and products labelled and priced as Norwegian Atlantic salmon sometimes are neither Norwegian not Atlantic salmon.

At SINTEF we have been working for about 15 years to develop and apply analytical methods to uncover frauds in food and fish products, including fish oils and nutraceuticals, such as oils capsules. The methods we use aim at identifying species, breeding stock, composition in mixtures, processing conditions, and we are now in the process to establish methodologies to identify the geographic origin of foods.

Food Safety

Implementation of traceability should help to minimize the problem of non-malicious falsifications and contaminations, but traceability systems rely on paper flow and verification mechanisms are needed to ensure the production of safe foods and avoid malicious substitutions and contaminations.

Our activities in this field include the examination of fish farming and seafood production chains, identification of vulnerable links and recommendations to minimize risks. We also evaluate analytical methods suitable to detect potential hazards and perform standard and molecular microbiological analyses for detection and typing of relevant bacteria.

Farming conditions and seafood quality

Farming conditions, including exercise regime, environmental stresses and feed composition, have an effect on the composition of the fish flesh and its quality. We are interested in evaluating how these variables modify the composition and properties of the fish edible tissues and design the conditions to obtain optimal quality.

Quality of pelagic fish

Our activities also include the evaluation of the effect of heavy feeding on the quality of pelagic fish, investigation of protein degrading enzymes and the developments of analytical methods to evaluate proteolytic activities.

Kontakt: Iciar Martinez