The HOLiFOOD project, together with 2 other EU-funded projects (ECOREADY, and EFRA) established an interesting resource: the CompreHensive European Food Safety (CHEFS).
This database consolidates 392 million analytical results from 25 years of European food safety monitoring into a single, accessible platform.
Until now, researchers faced a significant obstacle when working with European food safety data, as comprehensive monitoring data from EU member states was scattered across approximately 1,000 files totalling several hundred gigabytes.
This fragmentation made comprehensive analysis extremely challenging for most research teams.
The CHEFS database shifts this landscape by providing unified access to over 15.2 million samples covering more than 4,000 different food products from 2000 to 2024. The database encompasses pesticide residues, veterinary medicinal product residues, and chemical contaminants in a structured, analysis-ready format.
This consolidated dataset opens new possibilities for artificial intelligence applications in food safety research. Researchers can now develop sophisticated models to analyze trends, predict emerging hazards, and support early warning systems with unprecedented scope and precision.
The CHEFS database represents an advancement in European food safety research infrastructure. Its open access approach ensures that benefits extend across the broader research community, supporting accelerated scientific progress and improved food safety outcomes for European consumers.
Discover the entire database at https://github.com/WFSRDataScience/CHEFS
Check out the paper here