| Project Detail |
European fishery products are worldwide recognised for being top-quality and fully safe. In terms of value, the EU is the fourth biggest producer including capture and aquaculture products. To maintain this leading position and excellent reputation, the EU must address new challenges in terms of productivity, quality and safety. Anisakis is a parasite that can be found in marine organisms. When humans accidentally ingest Anisakis larvae, it can cause Anisakiasis, a disease difficult to diagnose and with diverse symptoms such as chronic urticaria, gastric ulcers or even anaphylaxis. Anisakis-infection risk can be reduced is fish is well cooked or previously frozen before consumption. However, consumption of raw or undercooked fishery products is increasing and not all the domestic freezers can reach the required conditions for Anisakis elimination. Add to this, some biochemical allergens released by the Anisakis larvae remain in the fish flesh even after cooking or freezing. Given the difficulty of eliminating the risk, fish producers are looking for solutions that can detect Anisakis presence in fishery products before reaching the consumer, which will allow them to maintain high quality and safety standards. Based on state-of-the-art spectral technology, AnisakFree efficiently detects Anisakis presence in fish production lines, with no need for sample preparation, and in a completely automated way. AnisakFree users will benefit from avoid expenditure in control surveys (that, moreover, are only applied to specific samples and do not assure the safety of all the fishery products), to have a distinct competitive advantage in terms of quality and safety and to not risk their brand image. We have estimated that AnisakFree will be used by 240 fish operators by 2025, which will generate accumulated net profits valued at 7.9 M€ and 20 new job positions in DSOD.
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