DEFENSEFOOD aims to strengthen Europe's food supply chain against chemical, biological, and radiological threats (CBR). It will develop advanced detection tools, preparedness protocols, and recovery strategies, combining scientific research, innovative technologies, and insights from crises. The project started in October 2025 and will run until 2029.

Project goals

The project's goal is to safeguard public health, ensure food security, and support economic stability. DENSEFOOD aims to develop and implement innovative measures to enhance the EU European Union (European Union) food chain's preparedness, resilience, and response to both intentional and accidental CBR contaminations.

DENSEFOOD will achieve its goals by:

1. Developing an AI-driven, evidence-based horizon scanning dashboard to anticipate changes in the food system environment.
2. Creating rapid detection methods, integrating novel targeted and untargeted analysis tools, and leveraging monitoring systems in EU member states.
3. Establishing test methodologies for reducing the impact of CBR threats on the food supply chain while enhancing the chain's recovery potential.
4. Coordination among EU and international security authorities, improving cross-border response mechanisms to food terrorism threats.
5. Creating knowledge management and decision-support tools to enable early detection, impact reduction and fast recovery of the supply chain from food contamination crises.
6. Improving awareness and preparedness of food system actors (mainly authorities and SMEs) to CBR threats through targeted training and capacity-building initiatives.

DENSEFOOD focuses on three critical case studies: cereals, shellfish, and water supply, which are essential to public health and particularly vulnerable to contamination.

Consortium

DEFENSEFOOD  consists of several EU research institutes and public organisations: Syreon Research Institute (Hungary), Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen Food Safety Research, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (The Netherlands), Sciensano (Belgium), McGill University (Canada), National Research Council (Italy), Spanish Food and Drink Industry Federation (Spain), Fraunhofer (Germany), Sustainable Criminal Justice Solutions (United Kingdom), University of the Bundeswehr Munich (Germany), Ubuntoo (the Netherlands) and reframe.food (Greece).

RIVM role

As the national institute for public health and the environment, RIVM plays a key role in the Dutch and European CBRN Chemical Biological Radiology and nuclear (Chemical Biological Radiology and nuclear) preparedness and response systems. RIVM collaborates closely with organisations such as EFSA, ECDC, WHO, and OPCW, as well as with European Reference Laboratories. RIVM's experience covers a broad range of contamination events, including unintentional foodborne outbreaks and chemical spills, as well as intentional or criminal contamination threats—providing unique insight into prevention, detection, and mitigation across both scenarios.

With this expertise, RIVM contributes to several work packages (WPs) and is leading WP2 on Risk identification and detection. WP2 aims to develop an evidence-based analytical decision tool that guides users through the consecutive steps required for the timely laboratory detection of potential food safety hazards. RIVM's ability to integrate scientific, regulatory, and communication aspects ensures that the outcomes of WP2 are robust, trusted, and applicable in real-world contexts. Moreover, RIVM is involved in WP1, which focuses on risk prediction and understanding the food threat environment, as well as in WP5, which addresses knowledge management and training.

RIVM colleagues from the centres for Zoonoses and Environmental Microbiology and Environmental Safety and Security will be involved in the execution of the project. They will contribute their expertise on early warning, food safety, and CBR detection and intentional release. 
Saskia Rutjes coordinates the contribution of RIVM to the project and is work package lead of WP2. Anja Versteeg, Paul Stege and Joris Sprokholt are task leads of Tasks T2.1, T2.2 and T2.4, respectively. Patricia Bekhuis will deliver the expertise on radiological risks, the R from CBR, to the project.

Funding

DEFENSEFOOD is a HORIZON-CL3-2024-DRS-01 project co-funded by the European Union under Grant Agreement No 101225957.