These measures have formed a firm basis for safe and high-quality Finnish foods. These achievements are due to both high-quality fundamental and applied food safety and quality research as well as close interactions between researchers, authorities, and industries. However, increasing complexity of food and health systems, mobility, antimicrobial resistance, and fraudulent practices in food production and distribution create new challenges for the future.
Over the recent decades efforts to support food industry's functionality and variety of industry practices and products have led to harmonization of legislation and flexible interpretation of regulations. This has created new and re-emerging public health hazards, and thereby challenged risk assessment and management in food safety systems.
In Helsinki One Health, we combine fundamental and epidemiological food safety research with the multidisciplinary fields of food safety risk assessment and food safety control research to produce novel means for risk assessment as well as agile control measures for risk management in complex food systems, employing state-of-the-art wet-lab and in silico approaches in order to develop novel strategies to manage antimicrobial resistance.
More information on the group leaders (principal investigators) can be obtained by the links to their profiles within the University of Helsinki.