New University Of Minnesota Technology Aims To Mitigate Food-Safety Risks

By Laurel Maloy, contributing writer, Food Online

The Department of Homeland Security believes CRISTAL software is the answer to more-effectively fighting against food fraud, bioterrorism, and foodborne illnesses

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a vested interest in the food-processing industry. Although, when you think about it, the opportunity for bioterrorism on a huge scale is a real-world scenario when facing the reality of our global food supply. The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) addresses the entire issue of food safety. However, it more-specifically addresses the possibility for intentional adulteration in its Proposed Rule for Focused Mitigation Strategies to Protect Against Intentional Adulteration.

CRISTAL (Criticality Spatial Analysis) has been developed at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, with funding provided almost in full by the National Center for Food Protection and Defense (NCFPD), under the DHS. This 11-year collaboration is nearing viability!

What can CRISTAL do?

• CRISTAL is user-friendly, enabling private industry and governmental agencies to analyze dissimilar food systems in order to efficiently identify those with the highest potential risk for adulteration, both intentional and unintentional
• CRISTAL can identify interdependent systems within a processing facility in order to determine the effect one has upon the other and to gauge the inherent risk in the confluence of each system
• CRISTAL can identify risks in advance, enabling the implementation of risk-based food security and food-safety procedures, including those in Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) food-defense systems
• CRISTAL is able to identify the efficiencies and vulnerabilities within the complex infrastructures of the global food supply, assessing and preventing both naturally occurring and purposefully-initiated food safety disasters  
• CRISTAL can instantly trace ingredients and finished products across multiple companies —from the farm, continuing throughout the entire food-processing chain, and, ultimately, to the private consumer’s table

The CRISTAL project is expected to reduce insurance costs to private companies. An increase in security, as well as the ability to prevent or more-effectively stop the spread of contamination throughout the distribution chain could be virtually priceless.  With CRISTAL in place, food companies and the government could conceivably function with less overhead, cutting or reorganizing to affect more efficient operations. This hard-earned, and so-far quite costly, collaboration could reduce the risk of and diminish the duration of foodborne illnesses.

However, the project coordinators are concerned. DHS is under fire for its immigration stance, its funding being threatened by congressional infighting. Though food safety is about as far away from immigration as you can get, there is concern that funding could be unintentionally cut when cutting other DHS subsidies. That DHS plays such a critical part in food safety is yet one more example of the need to more closely look at a streamlined food safety system.

There is a U.S. Patent Pending for CRISTAL, while the Office for Technology Commercialization at the University of Minnesota says the developmental phase is completed and the product is currently available. You may contact Andrew Morrow, the Technology Marketing Manager for Software & Physical Sciences, for more information.