MED Food TTHubs: Trace & Trust Hubs for Mediterranean Food
A new PRIMA project started in April 2020: the MED Food TTHubs project was born to provide safer and more sustainable Mediterranean food products for people all around the world.
When it comes to food safety, trust concerning the origin of raw materials (e.g. fruits, vegetables, livestock, fish) and the quality of the processes starting from cultivation and breeding until packaging and transport can be a bit of a challenge. At the same time, lack of traceability approaches to be applied to the full supply-chain poses additional threats to food industry sector preventing to fully satisfy consumers’ expectations for safe foods, as well as meet regulatory requirements.
Med Food TTHubs is set on deploying trusted and transparent standardised approaches along with cutting-edge technologies to support the implementation of full-path tracing practices through the whole distribution channel from seed to shelf.
Drawing inspiration from the widely applied GS1 Standards, Med Food TTHubs implements a “Voluntary Scheme of Traceability (VST) of MED foods”, as common protocol for the network of these Hubs, acting as a point of reference for the products of the different involved areas. This protocol includes detailed guidelines, audit procedures and KPIs in relation to practices and processes towards traceable, authenticated and of high nutritional quality products. In addition, an e-platform will fully support the operation of seven Trace & Trust Hubs (TTHubs) in each of the countries involved. The dedicated web-based platform will encompass a number of modules in order to: (i) facilitate sharing of information across the whole food supply chain, (ii) support the documentation of traceability and authenticity, and (iii) support the effective provision of more trustful processes for certification and quality control.
To put it simply, the MED Food Trace & Trust Hubs will form a permanent transnational network playing the role of a one-stop-shop for traceability and authenticity for ‘added value’ Mediterranean food products.
The Med Food TTHubs consortium consists of 10 partners from 7 countries, covering a wide range of expertise, as follows:
- Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece – (Coordinator)
- Green Project SA, Greece
- University of Patras, Greece
- Arab Academy for Science and Technology and Maritime Transport, Egypt
- Jordan University of Science & Technology, Jordan
- INOV INESC Inovação, Portugal
- Higher School of Engineers of Medjez El Bab, Tunisia
- TECNOALIMENTI S.C.p.A., Italy
- Engineering, Italy
- Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Stay tuned for all the updates!