• Queen's University Belfast

Tackling Global Food Safety

Discover the food safety challenges in monitoring and detecting contamination in food supplies whether by accident or fraud.

7,537 enrolled on this course

Food scientist handling meat burgers
  • Duration

    3 weeks
  • Weekly study

    3 hours

Ensuring Food Safety for a Growing Population

With increasing populations and global threats, the integrity and safety of global food chains has never been more at risk.

In many countries, simply getting enough to eat can be an issue, with poor quality food often contaminated with hazardous agents. In developed countries, pressure to deliver cheap, affordable food impacts quality and safety.

On this course, you will gain an advanced understanding of food safety issues and intervention approaches to be applied across the food supply chain, to help ensure a sustainable supply of safe, nutritious food meeting demand and improving human health.

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What topics will you cover?

Week 1: Food Fraud and Authenticity

  • The various types of food fraud threatening food integrity
  • Approaches to monitoring food fraud through trace and detection techniques
  • How false claims can be made on labelled products to mislead the consumer

Week 2: What is Food Safety?

• The types of hazards that threaten our food safety

• How food hazards can be monitored and the challenges to preventing their entry into the food chain

• Databases that can be used to search for information on food hazards

• Techniques that can be used to isolate foodborne pathogens from test samples

Week 3: Food Contamination – What is the impact on human health?

• Where food contaminants originate and how they enter our food

• Examples of how food contaminants affect our health

• How biomarkers can be used to determine exposure to dietary contaminants

• Different origins of food contaminants - naturally occurring and production related

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

  • Explore the threats to human health posed by fraud and the bacterial and chemical contamination of food
  • Examine the various approaches and techniques which can be applied to ensure the authenticity and safety of our food
  • Develop an awareness of the types of hazards which threaten global food supplies and the threats these present to human health
  • Reflect on the challenges posed to food safety and integrity and to human health by the demand to produce more food, and the types of approaches needed to address these challenges

Who is the course for?

This course covers techniques and research being applied and developed to improve food safety. The course is open to all, but aimed at learners at postgraduate level.

Who will you learn with?

I am Professor of Food Safety at Queen's University, Belfast and Director of the Institute for Global Food Security

I am a Professor of Microbiology and Food Safety at Queen's University Belfast.

My name is Dr Mark Mooney and I am a Senior Lecturer within the Institute for Global Food Security. I am Coordinator of the Food Safety Distance Learning PgCert/PgDip/MSc programmes offered by QUB.

Who developed the course?

Queen's University Belfast

Queen’s University Belfast is a member of the Russell Group of 24 leading UK research-intensive universities.

Learning on FutureLearn

Your learning, your rules

  • Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
  • Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
  • Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores

Join a global classroom

  • Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
  • Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
  • Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others

Map your progress

  • As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
  • Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control
  • Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate

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