Mission

METROFOOD-RI - Infrastructure for promoting Metrology in Food and Nutrition is a pan-European Research Infrastructure (RI) aimed to promote scientific excellence in the field of food quality and safety.

It provides high-quality metrology services in food and nutrition, comprising an important cross-section of highly interdisciplinary and interconnected fields throughout the food value chain, including agrifood, sustainable development, food safety, quality, traceability and authenticity, environmental safety, and human health.

METROFOOD-RI mission is to enhance quality and reliability of measurement results and make available and share data, information and metrological tools, to enhance scientific excellence in the field of food quality and safety and strengthen scientific knowledge, also promoting scientific cooperation and to integration.

METROFOOD-RI, in full harmony with the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) principles, is intended to provide distributed services, acting on the real plan of measurement reliability and procedure harmonization and adopting the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable) principles on data management and service provision.

The general objective is to enhance scientific cooperation, encourage interaction between the various stakeholders, and create a common and shared base of data, information and knowledge.

Scientific offer is addressed to a broad set of users and stakeholders, such as public and private labs and groups engaged in research activities in food and nutrition. The main user categories are Researchers and academic communities; Policy makers/food inspection and control agencies; Food business operators; and Consumers/citizens.

METROFOOD-RI also provides high-quality advanced training for academics and professionals, with training programs developed in agreement with counterparts (e.g. universities), together with outreach actions to a wider audience (consumers/citizens). Research activities and related services cover the whole food chain, from agrifood primary production up to final consumption, to support the sustainability of food production and consumption, improve food quality and safety, achieve food traceability and authenticity demonstration, and optimise all the steps from farm to fork with a holistic approach.

The agrifood sector is a strategic asset of all the European Countries and one of the largest and most important economic activities, with particular social relevance: it is vital to ensure employment, preserve rural public goods, supply healthy and quality food, and facilitate the integration of SMEs into the international food chain. Food quality and authenticity have now become a focus of consumer’s requirements all over the world. Food traceability and safety are key factors to ensure food quality and to protect consumers’ interests. In particular, food safety represents one of the most important elements of public health policies at a global level. High-quality data on the food chain are of fundamental importance to populate the expanding data technologies with useful contents and, according to the FAIR principles, enable advanced research on food and food metrology.