Summary of the outputs of the SAFEED-PAP project aiming to develop methods for the detection and quantification of presence of species-specific processed animal proteins in animal feed
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Vincent BAETEN Gembloux, Belgium |
Biography
Vincent BAETEN is part of the statutory staff and is project leader at the Quality Department of Agricultural products of CRA-W since 1999. He got his Engineer degree (1993) and PhD (1998) in Agricultural Sciences from the Catholic University of Louvain. Since 2006, he leads at CRA-W the group of spectroscopy and chemometry that develop alternative physical methods for the quality, the authentication and the traceability of agro-food products and for feed safety. He has more than 15 years of experience on European projects. In 1996-98, he was awarded with a Marie Curie Fellowship at the Instituto de la Grasa of Seville (Spain) where he was involved in demonstrating the potential of alternative techniques for the detection and quantification of food product adulteration.
Since 1999, he has been participating to the improvement of reference methods and the development of alternative methods for the detection of constituents of animal origin in feed. Since July 2006 he is the director of the Community Reference Laboratory for animal proteins in feedingstuffs (CRL-AP, www.crl.cra.wallonie.be). He has also a wide expertise in the management and administration of European projects. He has more than 30 publications linked to the MBM detection problematic. He was a member of the Scientific Committee of the Belgian Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--> (2004-2008). He participate and is member of the scientific committee of the TRACE IP (www.trace.eu.org) project, CONFFIDENCE (www.conffidence.eu) and COST Feed for Health (www.feedforhealth.org) European initiatives. These projects concern the traceability and the safety of food and feed products. He is also the coordinator of the European SAFEED-PAP project aiming the development of analytical methods for the species detection of processed animal proteins (http://safeedpap.feedsafety.org).
Abstract
V.Baeten and J.A Fernández Pierna
Nowadays, the European Commission has come to the stage that amendments of certain measures could be envisaged, without endangering the health or the policy of eradicating BSE, provided that the positive trend continues and scientific conditions are in place.
The scientific conditions to complete regarding the amendments of the total feed ban are the development and validation of analytical methods and tools for the detection of the presence of species-specific animal proteins in animal feed.
Actually, the existing methods do not allow species-specific identification and lead to the impossibility to lift the total ban and to implement the anti-cannibalism ban.
The SAFEED-PAP project (2006-2010) aims to help to complete the scientific conditions that should allow the repealing of the extended feed ban.
SAFEED-PAP project uses the inherent difference and complementarities of the various methods in terms of their targets to develop and validate methods that will allow reaching the scientific conditions for the amendment of the total feed ban.
The SAFEED-PAP project has three main objectives that should lead to solve the problematic of the species specific detection of MBM in compound feeds:
- Development of suitable validated methods for the species specific detection and quantification of animal protein in compound feed in order to allow the amendment of the extended total ban;
- Development of tools and analytical kits for the correct implementation of the methods in the labs;
- To set up the appropriate environment for the optimum application of the methods.
The European Project, SAFEED-PAP (FOOD-CT-2006-036221), on the “Detection of presence of species-specific processed animal proteins in animal feed”, is funded under the 6th EC FP, DG RTD.
To achieve the strategic objectives of the SAFEED-PAP project, several work packages (WP) were defined dealing with
the improvement and validation of test kits, the development of confirmatory methods, the develoment of methods for the quantitative detection of animal particles and for the species-specific quantitative identification of animal particles, the improvement of the official method and development of a screening method for the control laboratories , the validation of methods and feasibility studies for the production of certified reference materials as well as with the transfer, utilisation and dissemination of the knowledge.
SAFEED-PAP results will be summarised and the perspectives offered by the outputs of the SAFEED-PAP project will be discussed.
The members of the SAFEED-PAP consortium are:
Walloon Agriculture Research Centre (CRA-W) Belgium
Veterinary Laboratories Agency (VLA) United Kingdom
University of Córdoba (UCO) Spain
Institute of Food Safety (RIKILT) The Netherlands
IRMM-European Commission (IRMM) Belgium
The Danish Plant Directorate (PDIR) Denmark
Central Sciences Laboratory (CSL) United Kingdom
A.F.S.C.A. - Fed. Laboratory for the safety of food (FLVVT) Belgium
Department of Pathological Anatomy and Histology (NVL) Lithuania
Univ. of Milan Dept of Veterinary Sc. Tech. for Food Safety (UMIL) Italy
CCL-Research The Netherlands
Diagenode s.a. Belgium
China Animal Health and Epidemiology Center (CAHEC) China