Food safety and quality

Our team are national leaders in food safety and quality innovation. We take a flexible and adaptable approach, working closely with clients ranging from start-ups to multi-nationals.

How we help industry with food safety and quality

Food safety across the supply chain is impacted by a vast number of environmental, social and economic drivers. We provide a number of research service streams that enable stakeholders throughout the food industry – from primary processors to retailers – to achieve their desired outcomes:

• We support the poultry, red meat, dairy and horticulture industries in meeting compliance and market access requirements. We solve food safety challenges by conducting national benchmarking research studies and surveys on the presence of foodborne pathogens, antimicrobial resistance and hygiene indicators.
• We are leaders in helping the food manufacturing and ingredient industry adopt emerging food processing technologies and developing applications specific to their food products. We develop new products and formulations for safer, fresher, healthier and more sustainable foods.
  
  We validate the efficacy of new ingredients, additives or antimicrobials, and verify new technologies in achieving microbial safety and quality by conducting shelf-life storage and challenge testing studies at laboratory and pilot scale.
• Our domain knowledge, industry understanding and microbial genomic expertise help companies track down the source of contamination in product spoilage cases or during pathogen implicated recalls. Our understanding of biofilm formation in plant cleaning and sanitation helps the food industry solve contamination problems and prevent quality and safety non-conformances.
  
  We also conduct food safety risk assessments and design HACCP plans complementary for projects conducted in our pilot plant on interdisciplinary projects with our food processing, engineering, and technology capability.
• We develop continuous assurance approaches in navigating and making sense of through chain data on ingredients, products, and processes, informing business decision-making on quality and safety.

Our key food safety and quality resources available to industry

We have delivered some of the most influential food safety and quality innovation projects undertaken across Australia in recent times.

• laboratories including physical containment level 2 (PC2, OGTR) to work with foodborne pathogens, including work with C.botulinum, and food grade laboratories in Melbourne and Brisbane
• custom risk assessment and HACCP design for projects at pilot scale at our Regulatory Authority licenced facility, CSIRO’s food innovation centre
• PC2 laboratory for product contamination investigations and challenge testing to validate formulation changes and process conditions at laboratory and pilot scale
• wide range of processing technologies for microbial challenge testing and shelf-life studies
• molecular typing methods and gene sequencing expertise for identification of contamination in food products and manufacturing environments
• opportunity for interdisciplinary projects on product quality with our Sensory and consumer science team, and validation of technologies with our Processing and Engineering biology teams. 

Looking ahead: our future-focused research

In addition to our services, we’re engaged in forward-thinking research which we hope will shape the future of food safety and quality across industry. These projects focus on emerging areas, such as the role of microbiomes in food safety, redefining foodborne pathogens and shelf-life enhancement.

These research efforts will ultimately lead to new technologies and capabilities that enable industry to tackle future food safety, sustainability and security challenges.

This reflects our ongoing commitment to remain at the cutting edge of food safety science, and to anticipate industry needs before they arise.

For more information on our research

Visit our website on our food safety work.

To discuss food safety and quality innovations for your business, contact: