From 1 June 2019, RIKILT Wageningen University & Research and the Laboratory for Feed and Food Safety of the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA), will form a new institute. The new organization is named Wageningen Food Safety Research (WFSR) and is part of Wageningen University & Research. On 14 January 2019 the necessary documents were signed in Wageningen.
By merging both organizations, a unique knowledge institution is created for food and feed safety in the Netherlands. The new institute can carry out the laboratory support for the NVWA and the national government more effectively and more knowledge-intensively. This combination increases the knowledge in the field of food and feed safety and food fraud. Wageningen Food Safety Research is a mainstay in incidents and crises for the NVWA, the Ministries of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV) and Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) and plays a role with environmental incidents and (food) poisoning. In addition, WFSR also functions as a national and European reference laboratory.
The new institute can further expand its activities as an internationally renowned research center by joining forces.
Photo: Rob van Lint (NVWA), Louise O. Fresco (WUR) & Rens Buchwaldt (WUR) sign the merger documents.
Already close cooperation
The RIKILT (230 employees) and the Laboratory for Feed and Food Safety (130 employees) have been established in the same building on Wageningen Campus for quite some time and are already working closely together. A long process was preceded by this merger, in which the political decision was ratified in June 2018 by means of a parliamentary letter from the Ministers of LNV and VWS.
Source: WUR