Determining the geographical origin of food: TRACE elements and isotopic patterns in food verification

TRACE dissemination workshop

	Prague Czech Republic 3 November 2009

Objective

The globalisation of food markets and the relative ease, with which food commodities are transported through and between countries and continents, means that consumers are increasingly concerned about the origin of the foods they eat. A growing body of research articles have been published in the last five years detailing the use of natural abundance isotope variation and elemental concentrations as geographic 'tracers' to determine the provenance of food. These investigations exploit the systematic global variations of stable hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur isotope ratios in combination with elemental concentrations, including heavy isotope variations (e.g. strontium-87) and other biogeochemical indicators.

This workshop presents developments from the EU FP6 TRACE project in the application of multi-isotopic and multi-element methods in the emerging field of "Food Forensics".

Programme

08:30 - 09:00 Registration

09:00 - 09:15

Welcome message

Jana Hajslová , ICT Prague, RAFA 2009 conference chair

09:15 - 09:30

Introduction from chairman (L1)

Paul Brereton (TRACE Coordinator) - Fera - ( United Kingdom )

09:30 - 10:00

The need for geographical origin verification - regulations, certifications and fraud cases (L2)

Nigel Harrison - Food Standards Agency ( United Kingdom )

10:00 - 10:30

An introduction to stable Isotopes: Systematics and interpretation for determining geographic origin of food (L3)

Nikolai Pedentchouk - School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia ( United Kingdom )

10:30 - 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 - 11:30

Implications of animal metabolism for the interpretation of stable isotope signatures in origin determination (L4)

Frank Monahan - University College Dublin ( Ireland )

11:30 - 12:00 Practical and instrumental side of measuring stable isotopes in food for geographical origin assignment (L5)

Andreas Rossmann - Isolab GmbH ( Germany )

12:00 - 12:30

Combining strontium and light stable elements (C, N, O, S) isotopic signatures for the authentication of provenance of European cereal samples (L6)

Daniel Goitom Asfaha - Institute of Reference Materials and Methods, Geel ( Belgium )

12:30 - 13:30 Lunch

13:30 - 14:00

Isotopic and elemental data for tracing the origin of European olive oils (L7)

Luana Bontempo - E. Mach-Istituto Agrario di San Michele all'Adige ( Italy )

14:00 - 14:30

Isotope Analysis for the control of authenticity of Tyrolean milk (L8)

Micha Horacek - Austrian Research Centre, Seibersdorf ( Austria )

14:30 - 15:00

Multi-element (H, C, N, S) stable isotope ratio characteristics of honey from different European regions (L9)

Antje Schellenberg - Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority ( Germany )

15:00 - 15:30

The use of stable carbon isotopes to authenticate claims that poultry have been corn-fed (L10)

Paul Brereton - Food and Environment Research Agency ( United Kingdom )

15:30 - 16:00 Coffee break

16:00 - 16:30

About MoniQA (Monitoring and Quality Assurance in the Food Supply Chain) (L11)

Martin Rose - Food and Environment Research Agency ( United Kingdom )

16:30 - 17:00

TRACE - Where to know? (L12)

Summary and Discussion (Andreas Rossmann and Paul Brereton)

17:00 Close of the workshop

1.Workshop set-up