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Exploiting co-products, minimizing wasteThe first international conference on reducing food processing waste "Total Food 2004" was successfully hosted by the Institute of Food Research between 25th and 28th April, 2004. The Conference was sponsored by
Total Food 2004 brought together a wide range of interest groups including food processors, research scientists, consumer scientists and non Governmental organizations. It was attended by nearly 100 delegates from all over the world, as far a field as New Zealand, Hawaii and South Africa. In addition, representatives from several UK knowledge transfer organizations - the Food Processing Faraday and the MiniWaste Faraday - along with representatives from the Animal Feed Industry, held focused workshops to address emerging issues. The Conference presented a substantial number of commanding Plenary lectures and targeted short talks. The opening Plenary Lecture on Sunday evening was given by Professor Jules Pretty of the University of Essex. This set the scene for a sustainable food chain within a global context, and provided the delegates with a clear overview of the many hidden costs of food production. These include damage to the environment which is continually picked up by the rest of society. If the real costs of food production were added up, we would find that modern industrialized systems of production perform poorly in comparison with sustainable systems (Jules Pretty). This was followed by a Plenary Lecture from Professor Albert Tacon, Hawaii, on new and exciting microtechnological advances in fish farming. The subsequent 3 days included a further 10 plenary lectures, complemented by almost 30 short talks and poster presentations. Comprehensive consideration was given to the drivers to reduce wastage, from legislation (Brian Sanders, ADAS, UK) through to consumer concerns (Professor Lynn Frewer, The Netherlands). This was followed by a wide ranging evaluation of the emerging science and technology which may provide some of the answers. This included fractionation and extraction of co-products to obtain potentially valuable components for use as ingredients and nutriceuticals (Professor Thomas-Barberan, Spain) through to extraction of functional foods (Professor Edel Elvevoll, Norway), and whole-co-product exploitation (Dr Keith Waldron, UK). One of the most promising examples highlighted by Dr David Clark of DMV (The Netherlands) concerned the whey industry which has turned a conventional waste stream into a valuable source of nutrients and pharmaceuticals. In addition, Dr Jeremy Tompkinson from the National Non-Food Crops Centre (York) highlighted the synergy in approaches between non food crop exploitation and co-product utilisation. Professor Pieternel Claassen (The Netherlands) and Colin Rudd (UK) assessed bulk waste processing, and Dr Libe De Las Fuentes (Spain) presented a report on the recent Thematic Network "AWARENET" which has investigated European food waste production and technologies currently available. Professor Tiny van Boekel (The Netherlands) gave a pragmatic forward look in the final Plenary lecture. There was a general consensus that Total Food 2004 provided a sound foundation for an on-going biennial series of conferences to be held internationally. It is envisaged that the next conference will be: "Total Food 2006". Total Food 2004 Proceedings - [pdf format 7.3 Mb]
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