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Healthy and Safe Food for the Future

• A foresight project in Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech
  Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia
• Food quality and safety are crucial aspects of
  human life and are, therefore, prime policy
  objectives of the EU. Food quality and safety
  have to be secured through regulations with
  regard to inputs, production processes, outputs,
  transportation, storage, packaging, labeling,
  documentation of origin and the like.
• A foresight process is highly instrumental to
  tackle these complex issues. By bringing together
  the relevant stakeholders with their wide range
  of expertise and accumulated skills it is
  possible to identify emerging technological and
  market opportunities and threats, consider ST
  and socioeconomic factors in their entirety, and
  thus devise appropriate policies and strategies,
  based on consensus among these stakeholders.
• The objectives of the project are to promote a
  new decision-making culture among managers and
  policy makers in order to put quality and safety
  issues into the centre of the total food chain
  management and to identify future key
  technologies and new business models to promote
  the quality and safety requirements in food
  production.
• The methodology used in this project is based on
  different foresight tools. The key axes of this
  methodology are
• mobilization of a variety of stakeholders
• a socio-economic scenario building exercise
• interviews with specialists from different
  disciplines and affiliation
• a survey on key technologies to address
  challenges associated with the future of the
  industry
• vision building exercise to depict multiple
  possible future states
• technology road mapping to consider the ST
  implications.
• The project is fully financed by the European
  Commission through the Sixth Framework Programme
  (FP6). The project team consists of the different
  participants, including project coordinator
  (UNIDO) with advisors on metodological and
  economic aspects a group of partners-experts in
  Technology Foresight and Innovation, a reference
  group of high-level policy-makers and a knowledge
  institution on food industry from each
  participating country. The implementation plan
  consists of a set of work packages. The duration
  of the whole Project is 24 months concluded by
  the final conference in January 2009.
• Figure 1 Workplan flowchart of the FutureFood6
  project

The project has built and developed a series of
future scenarios in the year 2020 horizon, which
were consistent and plausible. Trends
corresponding to high importance and uncertainty
level in the evaluation matrix were grouped into
two axis, which encompassed major future changes
The vertical axis referred to potential changes
in the behaviour of local demand. The horizontal
axis reflected the potential evolution of
knowledge and contexts within the food industry.
The election and characterisation of two axes
was the base for building four scenarios in which
the food industry could hypothetically operate in
the year 2020 horizon (see Figure 3).
Current level of application of various
technologies in the region was constructed as a
result of critical technology evaluation phase of
the project. The project used key technologies
questionnaire and survey to identify critical
technologies. The results exhibit a slightly
favourable situation comparing to the level of
development of these technologies, identified for
the purposes of this foresight study (Figure 4).
Figure 4 Current position in the application of
the technology at regional level
The results of key technology phase are presented
separately using the average value of the
different type of technology for each topic
identified as important for the purposes of the
evaluation. For example, the potential impacts of
technologies on health show a rather similar
pattern across the technology groups (Figure 5).
Significant positive effects (the fraction of
weak and significant impacts together above 50)
are found for all technologies. Their share
ranges between 50 and 90. Figure 5 Potential
impacts on health
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For illustration, some key results of the project
available at present are discussed in this
poster. The project is organized on the basis of
unique UNIDO multi-country methodology with the
main focus on the production chain and its
related clusters. The production or value chain
focuses on the sequence of processes which
usually take place at the company level, covering
from market research to final distribution,
including all intermediate operational processes
(administration, finance, training and quality
management). Just as well, the value chain scheme
shows the main drivers for each process. The
food industrys value chain encompasses all
participants and main processes involved in food
production, from the suppliers of inputs via
primary production, manufacturers, retailers, to
final consumers (see Figure 2). Besides these
participants, the value chain approach takes into
consideration other public and private agents,
which are directly involved in the food
industrys operations knowledge organisations
(universities, RD centres, etc.), public
institutions (policy makers and consumers
associations), related industries and services
(marketing and advertising, consulting,
engineering and financial services).
On the basis of key technologies phase, four
future visions were developed, among which, for
example, Vision 1 Increased availability of
high-quality region-specific and traditional food
products in the region. Roadmaps have been
developed on the basis of previous results. The
project is going to be closed at the Final
Conference on 27 January 2009 in Vienna, Austria,
where the Final Report indicating Policy
Recommendations will be presented.
Contact UNIDO Foresight Initiative at
www.unido.org/foresight and FutureFood6 page at
www.futurefood6.com
2008
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE