Wageningen Food Safety Research

Wageningen Food Safety Research is a research institute for food safety, part of Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands.

History

On the initiative of Minister of Agriculture Carola Schouten, articulated in a Kamerbrief of 7 June 2018, the institute was established in 2019 by merging the existing RIKILT and the Laboratory for Feed and Food Safety of the Nederlandse Voedsel- en Warenautoriteit. A major reason for the merger was to establish a single organisation to support the NVWA and the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality and Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport in incidents and crises in the field of feed and food safety, as well as food fraud.

Activities

WFSR is an expertise centre for food and feed safety. The institute provides laboratory support to the NVWA and relevant ministries in the event of emergencies. It also conducts research in environmental incidents and (food) poisonings. In addition, WFSR functions as a national and European reference laboratory.