The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is aiming to boost its data science and artificial intelligence capabilities to identify food and feed risks.
It has said it wants to take a more proactive approach in mitigating risk by identifying any evidence of factors such as microbiological risks, changes in consumer attitudes towards food, changes in business models and technical advancements in food production.
The FSA has published a market notice for support in the effort, saying it will involve delivering work packages for continuous improvement and new data science use cases.
This will build on the establishment of its strategic surveillance service in 2017 that uses data science skills to predict risks to public health in the food chain.
“We need to deliver data science and AI projects that make the best use of data to identify food and feed risks before they become a public health concern,” it says.
“We have a number of existing products in this space that we need to operationalise, maintain and continuously improve, as well as new use cases for which solutions need to be developed, and a new data platform that is still in the early development stage.”
Image from iStock, jovanmandic
