Call for earlier tests for safety of food

A new group wants the potential health impact of new foods to be considered earlier by the industry.

The Food Safety Centre, a partnership between Canterbury and Lincoln universities, has been set up to support the development of New Zealand's food products.

The centre has received seed funding of $800,000 for two years from the Tertiary Education Commission.

Canterbury University professor of toxicology Ian Shaw , the centre's director, said courses would be tailored to the industry and would cover subjects from food contamination and the effect on consumers to safety issues relating to the development of new food products.

One of the centre's aims was to offer a master's degree in food safety, he said.

"Lincoln is agricultural, practical and has good links with the industry, and Canterbury has quite a lot of research with a foody orientation," he said. "We were looking at the whole gamut, from research to education, but we thought we'd restrict it [for now] to linking with industry and try to be part of increasing and understanding food safety. With the nice, new innovative food the industry is making, they probably wouldn't think about food-safety issues until quite a long way through the development of the product. When something really innovative, like

GM [genetically modified] food, hits ... the industry may not have discovered all the food-safety issues."

"If the industry buys into it, it will be a big success," Shaw said of the Lincoln-based centre. "If they say 'You think we're paying for that?' then it's totally failed."

- © Fairfax NZ News