e-MENSA

In the last decade severe large-scale food emergencies took place in Europe. Unpredictable accidents, speculative technological management and climatic adversities deeply affected market stability, consumer health and product supply. With the actual structure of European agro-food supply chain, food chain players have realized to be impotent in managing quality and safety of foodstuffs and European consumers have begun to loose confidence in quality and safety systems.

The e-MENSA project was based on the understanding that solutions to food chain problems can be found through improved supply chain management infrastructures. Purposive co-ordination of all component processes in the supply chain would assure that the correct standards are applied at the lowest possible cost. The project addressed the possibility of increasing safety and quality standards of the complete food chain, from consumption back to primary production, by the introduction of innovation-based management, which consists of electronic platforms.

The central issue for all project activities was the feasibility of employing this management infrastructure to the food system.

The proposed project aimed at establishing if a technology of supply chain electronic platforms (e-platforms) could be implemented for supporting the coordination of different players in the agri-food sector through multi-stakeholder trans-national working groups. The goals were to explore consensus across players/academia on technological strategies, to prepare for future research activities, to support policy development at national and European level and to contribute to identify research agendas for future community research. The issue will be addressed from the scientific, technological, economic, organisational, regulative, ethical and legislative points of view.

The result was a pan-European technology platform of academia, industry and consumers for a continuous knowledge-based exchange also beyond project duration.