Innovative approaches to quality assurance and food safety in the Feta PDO supply chain - Pilot workshops series

As part of the ALLIANCE pilot workshops series, an event titled “Innovative approaches to quality assurance and food safety in the Feta PDO supply chain”  was held last April in Volos (Greece). 

The workshop was co-organised by the University of Thessaly School of Agricultural Sciences - coordinator of the project - in partnership with the Hellenic Association for ICT in Agriculture, Food & Environment, and it involved representatives from pilot leader and dairy producer Olympos - Hellenic Dairies, as well as from technology provider Netcompany (formerly Netcompany-Intrasoft), as well as speakers from the AgrEconLab and NITLAB laboratories of the University of Thessaly. The event was addressed to researchers, professionals in the agri-food sector, students, and anyone interested in food innovation.

The workshop opened with a presentation by Georgios Antoniadis from the IT Department of Olympos on Tools and Methods for Quality Control in the PDO Feta Value Chain, who discussed a case study from Olympos. 

Dr Marios Vasileiou, Postdoctoral Researcher at the AgrEconLab of the University of Thessaly, gave a presentation titled "From Milk to Shelf" which covered the topic of traceability along the PDO Feta cheese food supply chain, and critical points along the journey. Then, Dr Apostolos Apostolaras, Postdoctoral Researcher at Nitlab of the University of Thessaly discussed the ALLIANCE approach to securing quality-labelled food supply chain systems with Blockchain technology. A web app for food traceability based on blockchain is indeed one of the main offerings of the ALLIANCE project. 

A presentation on Supporting Risk-Aware Decisions in PDO Feta Cheese Supply Chains through AI Services was delivered by Dr Pantelis Lappas from the Research and Development department at Netcompany–Intrasoft, the organisation which, among other tasks, is responsible for the development of an AI-enabled Early Warning and Decision Support System, as well as for preventing food fraud with predictive analytics.

The event concluded with a presentation on Value Chains and Agricultural Economics: Impacts of Traceability and
Innovation in the Agri-Food Sector by Dr Spyros Niavis, Assistant Professor at the Department for Planning & Regional Development of the University of Thessaly. 

To find out more about the ALLIANCE PDO Feta cheese pilot, check out the video below: