ISEKI _ Food Network: Contribution for European and World Food Technology Development

The European Commission has been financing several international academic networks, the objectives of which are related to education/training, research, industry and government. Particularly in the food field, the ISEKI_Food (Integrating Safety and Environment Knowledge In Food towards European Sustainable Development - http://www.iseki-food.eu/) network was initiated eleven years ago. This network has been expanding, demonstrating that international aspects of food science and engineering, as well as related subjects, are more and more important for governments, industry and the academia.

ISEKI_Food was designed as a network of university and research institutions, professional associations, industrial partners and students associations to foster collaboration on a variety of joint interest projects. Several European and six global academic networks projects received funding between 1998 and 2011 from the European Commission.

Figure1. Timeline of the establishment and growth of networks under the ISEKI_Food initiative

To ensure the sustainability of the network activities the ISEKI_Food Association (http://www.iseki-food.net/) was founded in 2005 to be a leading network for all stakeholders in the food supply chain with regard to education, legislation and communication.

Figure 2. Organisational chart of the ISEKI_Food Association. The organisation is open to all stakeholders in the food supply chain that have a vested interest in education, research, legislation and improved communication

The main objectives of the network are to contribute to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in the field of food studies by internationalisation and enhancement of quality. The workplan is fostering innovative developments, enhancement of food studies quality, and improvement of European higher education international attractiveness.

More specific objectives are:

• Creation of a Virtual Networking Environment (VNE) for international cooperation and mobility;
• The European Quality Assurance System for Food Study Programmes (EQAS_Food);
• Facilitating/ promoting/ fostering lifelong learning in higher education (APEL);
• Innovation in food study materials;
• Development of a platform for the international cooperation and mobility in the field of food (PICAM_Food); and
• Exploitation of research results especially to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

ISEKI_Food Network

ISEKI_Food 3 (Integrating Food Science and Engineering Knowledge Into the Food Chain, http://www.ISEKI-Food.eu/) is one of the academic networks in the life long learning programme (LLP) of the European Union (EU). This academic network, running from 2008 – 2011, includes 95 institutions (74 universities, 11 industrial and research partners and 10 associations). This project is structured into 8 working groups (WGs), each with several coordinators coming from different institutions and countries. Necessary annual meetings are programmed to know each other, share different experiences and to develop further joint activities. The main outputs of ISEKI-Food 3 are guidelines for quality assurance of food studies, workshops, web databases, teaching materials and methods (including books, e-learning courses and a training network) and a “virtual” community of actors in the field of food.

ISEKI_Mundus 2 (Integrating Safety and Environmental Knowledge in World Food Studies, http://www.ISEKI-Food.eu/), running from 2008 – 2011, is an extension of the ISEKI_Food 3 project, including 53 countries from all continents, from Canada to New Zealand. The main objectives are to “foster the internationalisation and enhance the quality of European higher education food studies” and “promotion of good communication and understanding between European countries and the rest of the world”.

ISEKI-Food Association (European Association for Integrating Food Science and Engineering Knowledge Into the Food Chain, http://www.iseki-food.net/) is an outcome of ISEKI_Food, founded in 2005 to guarantee the sustainability of all the results from several projects after the financial support of the European Commission. The organisation currently has more than 110 individual and 18 company members from 45 countries, and focuses on promoting synergy between research, education/teaching and industry with respect to food science and food technology, promote global food quality assurance, development of a virtual community of experts in the field of food, with communication to the general public, establish a framework of agreements among partners, fostering the mobility of students and staff, and create internal bodies that promote the integration of science and engineering knowledge into the food chain and to recognise outstanding achievements in food sciences through the ISEKI Academy.

Today the ISEKI_Food Network is one of the most successful EU_Networks that is managing to achieve a great impact through its internationalisation and communication to the rest of the world.

The Role of the ISEKI_Food Network

The food and beverage industry is the largest European manufacturing sector in terms of turnover, value-adding and employment. However, it is fragmented in SMEs / microenterprises (99.1% businesses – generating 48.1% of food and beverage turnover and employing 61.6% of the sectoral workforce) and multinational companies (0.9% business – 51.6% turnover, 53.5% added value and 38.4% of the employment). Labour productivity and percentage of higher-level skilled and better paid staff is considerably lower than in most other industry sectors. Moreover, in terms of innovation performance ranking, investment in research and export/import, Europe has been loosing position, compared with other regions of the world. Therefore, the need for well prepared food professionals, with the right skills and competencies, is a continuous challenge. Professionals in this field have to have a multidisciplinary view at European level, and good knowledge on safety, health and preference, and environmental aspects. Moreover, actual conceptions of lifelong learning are focused on employability, flexible career and qualification paths and strong connections among qualifications providers and society.

Through the previous projects, the network has been mainly working on: the tuning of curricula and agreement on food studies minimum requirements; curricula design based on learning outcomes and competences; alignment between teaching, learning and evaluation; compilation of quality monitoring systems for university teaching in Europe and comparison with other non-European systems and proposal for a common European method; teaching materials and methods; and relations between education, research and industry; among others.

There is a need to continuously develop most of the mentioned working topics, and start working on new aspects, in order to achieve the lifelong learning objectives and the Lisbon goal – make Europe the most competitive and “knowledge-based” economy in the world.

Conclusions

The ISEKI_Food 3 and ISEKI_Mundus 2 projects include work packages on dissemination and exploitation of results, willing to strength and consolidate the ISEKI_Food Association (IFA). IFA will be developing activities in the field of the consortium work, such as an E-journal, and workshops, that will contribute for its sustainability beyond the Socrates/Erasmus financing. This will allow the network to continue its work towards the internationalisation and quality enhancement of European higher education food studies. Moreover, the maintenance of this network will contribute for the prestige and attractiveness of European higher education food studies and to attract IFA members from all over the world.

A final two days conclusion conference (2nd International ISEKI_Food Conference) will be organised to present and disseminate the final projects (ISEKI_Mundus 2 and ISEKI Food 3) outputs and conclusions. This conference will occur on 31 August to 2 September 2011 in Milan, Italy.

Today the ISEKI_Food Network is one of the most successful EU Networks, that is managing to achieve a great impact through its internationalisation and communication activities to the rest of the world.

Acknowledgements

With the support of LLP Academic Network: 142822-LLP-1-2008-1-PT-ERASMUS-ENW – agreement, 2008-3833/001-001, and Erasmus Mundus Thematic Network: 2008-2442 / 002-001 MUN MUNATT of the European Union.

Further information is available from ISEKI, E-mail: office@iseki-food.net, iseki.secretariat@esb.ucp.pt