This Training Network brings together some of the leading researchers in Europe, industry and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) in a common goal to develop a world-class system to combat food chain vulnerability to climate change. The programme will provide a competitive advantage to ESRs perusing jobs in industry due to their superior knowledge of industry and it challenges. The programme will ensure enhanced collaboration between public and private sector partnersthrough inter sectorial secondment and with active and full involvement of the non-academic sector in the training programme.
The overall aim of the Training Network is to train highly-skilled researchers on a range of predictive modelling tools to evaluate the effects of climate change on food safety, (i.e. injurious to health due to mycotoxins/pathogenic bacteria or unfit for human consumption due to spoilage bacteria, (EC No 178/2002)). The Training Network will provide a science based integrated platform for management options and decisions on new and emerging food safety and quality threats due to climate change. Specific case studies will be developed for a highly susceptible sector, the dairy industry (e.g. cheese, yogurt, liquid milk) and emerging chemical and biological threats.
The Training Network will integrate 8 ESRs into an overall network collaboration. To achieve the overall aim and objectives of PROTECT, the work has been organised into 7 complementary and interconnected work packages (WPs).
Work package 1 shapes the management and recruitment activities of the Training Network while WP2 looks at all the individual training, professional and career development plansfor the ESR. Individual research projects (IRP) are integrated into WP3, 4, 5, each looking at a specific aspect of predictive modelling and the influence of climate change, while the results of these WPs are integrated into WP6.