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We research food borne bacteria, fungi and chemicals to make sure that Australians can continue to feel confident that the foods we buy are safe for our families to eat.

The challenge

Australia and food safety

Next time you're shopping at a supermarket, take a moment to think about how safe it is to eat the food in your trolley. Thankfully, it is a given in Australia that generally the food products we buy won't make us sick and that we can transport and store them as per their labels. However, many countries don't have the same protections in their food supply as we do.

Colonies of Salmonella bacteria. Salmonella can cause serious food poisoning.

Colonies of Salmonella bacteria. Salmonella can cause serious food poisoning.

Scientific understanding, along with good regulation and production, processing and handling practices make our everyday foods safe, boost food manufacturers' access to export markets and develop new and innovative food products.

Our response

Keeping Australia's food supply safe

Our research on the safety of Australia's food supply starts at the farm, where we help the $10b red meat and dairy industries, in particular, ensure their raw commodities are as free from bacterial, fungal and chemical contamination as possible. This helps make foods safer all the way to supermarket shelves, extends food storage life and increases Australia's exports through better ability to meet the import requirements of other countries.

We also work with food manufacturers to develop, process and export high value, highly transformed meat and dairy products (ready to eat meals and bioactive dairy powders, for example) by ensuring their processes and related environments are as risk free as possible.

We are world leaders in helping companies adopt new food processing technologies, such as high pressure processing, and ensuring products are just as safe - or safer - than those processed with traditional technologies such as heat.

As a trusted advisor to government and food safety regulators, we have a national role in Australia's food regulation system and provide scientific advice that shapes national food safety regulations.

From on-farm, to manufacturing, exporting and for consumers, we work at all stages of the food supply chain to support Australia's enviable food safety record.

Goodman Fielder – Safe Innovation

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[Image changes to show the Goodman Fielder logo with text:  goodman fielder our homegrown food company]

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Andre Teixeira:  I’m Andre Teixeira, Chief R&D and Quality Officer for Goodman Fielder in Sydney.

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Goodman Fielder is a food company with a long tradition of supplying consumers in Australia and New Zealand and the Pacific area with a number of food products, among them dressings and mayonnaise and sauces of all kinds.

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The challenge on this project was that we’re both looking at a taste improvement with the elimination or reduction of vinegar, and at the same time addressing the major health and wellness issue in reducing the amount of sugar and salt in our product, while guaranteeing the perfect food safety.

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We came to CSIRO with a problem.

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They introduced us to FIAL and the SME Solution Centre, and together we developed a solution for our dressings that was reformulated to our taste, and at the same time with perfect food safety.

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We were quite happy to see that CSIRO had already developed a number of solutions that matched exactly what we were looking for potentially in terms of addressing this need for new tastes, while guaranteeing the food safety.

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Through the SME Solution Centre we’re able to access FIAL’s funding, and CSIRO expertise, which helped us significantly to achieve the goals that we started out with.

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We couldn’t have done the work in-house fundamentally because we do not have the scientific capability.

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The difference from where we were before and where we are today as a result of this relationship between FIAL, ourselves, and CSIRO, is the fact that we did not have to invest in scientific capabilities that would take a number of years to materialise and to bear fruit, and we had immediate access to an existing knowledge base that was at arm’s reach for us.

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And we could immediately see the results by co-operating, by working together in a very collaborative manner.

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The SME Solution Centre, which is a partnership between FIAL and CSIRO, has provided training via CSIRO to our new product development team in the use of the tool.  That training has a major impact in the way we reformulate products for this project and beyond.

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The relationship in the future, it can only go further and further and further, because obviously when you have success in one area we immediately become curious about what else we could do.

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There are a number of other opportunities, not just problems, but opportunities to create new ideas and bring those ideas into concepts that eventually can become projects for the future.

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[Text appears on screen:  The SME Solution Centre, a collaboration between CSIRO and FIAL.  Various logos appear at the bottom of the screen:  CSIRO; FIAL Food Innovation Australia Ltd; Supported by Australian Government]

 [CSIRO logo appears with text: Big ideas start here www.csiro.au]



Goodman Fielder - safe innovation :  Andre Teixeira, Goodman Fielder Chief R&D and Quality Officer, discusses the benefits for his business of working with CSIRO and Food Innovation Australia Ltd.

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Case study

Case studies:

Moira Mac's: revolutionising supermarket cooked meats

Moira Mac’s has revolutionised the supermarket cooked meat section as the first company in Australia to use high pressure pasteurisation (HPP) for smallgoods processing.

Shockwave technology for food products

Shockwave is a new, innovative food processing technology with exciting possibilities for food products. Tenderising meat is a promising initial food processing application.

Goodman Fielder - safe innovation

Goodman Fielder is a leading food company across Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific. They have an extensive portfolio of brands that consumers know and love, covering every meal of the day. The company collaborated with CSIRO and Food Innovation Australia (FIAL) through their SME Solution Centre to create better tasting and healthier dressings, sauces and mayonnaises to meet changing consumer demands.

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