EU: Commission to create food safety research network

The European Commission is investing €14m (US$15.7m) to create an EU ‘CASCADE’ network of excellence investigating the presence and effect of harmful chemicals in common foodstuffs. It will include more than 20 universities, research institutes and businesses, all coordinated by Sweden's Karolinska Institute. Their neurologists, chemists, and experts in risk assessment and metabolism will assess these chemicals’ effect on human health and provide advice about how consumers can avoid them by eating healthy alternatives.

September 10, 2003

The European Commission is investing €14m (US$15.7m) to create an EU ‘CASCADE’ network of excellence investigating the presence and effect of harmful chemicals in common foodstuffs.

It will include more than 20 universities, research institutes and businesses, all coordinated by Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. Their neurologists, chemists, and experts in risk assessment and metabolism will assess these chemicals’ effect on human health and provide advice about how consumers can avoid them by eating healthy alternatives.

CASCADE will start work early next year and will operate a website. Ingemar Ponratz, Karolinska Institute researcher, told a Commission research newsletter: “We aim ….to develop an advisory expertise in order to provide scientific information to policy makers and other non-experts.”