Computer program says no to faulty foodstuffs

Scientists at Kingston University in Surrey have launched a computer program to enable food manufacturers, retailers and food safety authorities to monitor trends in worldwide food alerts.

If they can get funding, they intend to develop the program to enable it to use weekly world-wide food recall data. This would allow them to predict future food alerts, such as last year's scare over melamine in infant formula from China.

As reported in Food Manufacture last year, Professor Declan Naughton and his team have analysed world-wide food alerts over the past five years. They have discovered that 10 countries were responsible for 60% of all faulty food, with China top of the list.

The computer program is now available on the web (http://staffnet.kingston.ac.uk/~ku36087/foodalert). It analyses the patterns of traffic in faulty foodstuffs since 2003 and highlights the countries that trade and detect faulty foodstuffs. It enables users to quickly get at information about the patterns of food safety alerts and to assess their importance.

The results are 'weighted' according to importance of a food safety alert. The program will also spot any attempt by a country to harm the reputation of another by persistently reporting food safety alerts on food imported from that country.