Communities on Food Consumer Science

Communities on Food Consumer Science

COMFOCUS brings together, integrates on European scale, and opens up key national and regional research infrastructures in the inherently interdisciplinary field of food consumer science to all European researchers, from both academia and industry, ensuring their optimal use and joint development. Its mission is to advance the food consumer science community beyond its current level of fragmentation that is preventing it from being the data-rich science area contributing to the societal problem of (un-)healthy food choices. As a library of meta data and digital service tools, the COMFOCUS Knowledge platform is developed as an easily accessible focal point for all European researchers to make this happen within the principles of FAIR and Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI) data use. COMFOCUS achieves this through a coordinated set of activities on networking, joint research and transnational and virtual access to key research infrastructures. Networking activities foster the culture of co-operation between 10 key research infrastructures, and beyond in interaction with academic and industry research users and technology developers. Joint research activities develop the harmonisation protocols for measurement and research procedures both in the area of conventional self-reported data and more objective emerging food consumer science methodologies. The transnational and virtual access activities ensure that researchers from outside the consortium are supervised to become experienced with this new way of working, while also contributing to the data infrastructure from which the COMFOCUS Knowledge platform can further grow into the future. Promotion of transnational and virtual access and dissemination of COMFOCUS outcomes and innovations for maximum impact will be supported by a Stakeholder Forum from relevant bodies such as consumer organizations, food industry, retail, NGOs, and policy makers at national and EU levels.