What is Safety in the Food Chain?

Unsafe food causes many acute and life-long diseases, ranging from diarrhoeal diseases to various forms of cancer. WHO estimates that foodborne and waterborne diarrhoeal diseases alone and taken together kill about 2.2 million people annually, 1.9 million of them children.… [WHO, 2012]  

The food sector is the largest manufacturing sector in Europe and employs about 3.8 million people; thousands of them working in the field of food safety in order to guarantee safe food for all consumers.

Professionals in the area of food safety need to have fundamental knowledge in different fields of science, such as:

• food chemistry
• food microbiology
• food technology
• risk assessment, risk management or risk communication

They work in their professions as researchers, R&D-experts, food inspectors, food safety managers, and consultants, food safety experts in agencies or as consultants with one mission: to protect the consumer’s health of food borne diseases.

The MSc “Safety in the Food Chain” equips you with the highly specific knowledge, skills and competences needed to face the fascinating challenges of food safety along the food chain:

• specialized theoretical and practical knowledge in the scientific fields of food chemistry, food microbiology, food production and the organization of food safety on an international level
• The ability to analyze and evaluate complex food safety problems on a technical as well as on a social level
• The ability to develop, apply and communicate new methods and systems
• Working in an interdisciplinary, international environment
• Communicating food safety related topics to consumers, experts and other stakeholders

Your first year of your studies will be situated at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna (BOKU) where we provide you with all the basic skills you need.

To ensure you an international environment and to meet your very special interests, Safety in the Food Chain is designed for you to choose a semester from three other partner universities with their own specializations. If you want, you can also write your final thesis at one of the partner universities.

Focus of the ELLS-partner universities

• University of Copenhagen – Faculty of Science
  
  Sanitation and Hygienic Design, Processing and Food Borne Microorganisms, Int. Food Law and Safety Management, Risk Analysis in a National and Global Context

• Wageningen UR
  
  Risk Communication, Epidemiology and Public Health, Gene Technology, Predictive Modelling

• University of Hohenheim  
  
  Nutrient/Gene Interaction, Global Nutrition, Metabolic Syndrome, Safety in Agriculture and Organic Farming

Please don’t hesitate to contact us – we'd love to hear from you!