{"id":447238,"date":"2026-03-10T17:33:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/03\/10\/sicurezza-alimentare-lue-presenta-tracemap-lia-contro-frodi-e-cibo-contaminato\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T20:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T19:03:11","slug":"food-safety-the-eu-presents-tracemap-the-ai-against-fraud-and-contaminated-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/03\/10\/food-safety-the-eu-presents-tracemap-the-ai-against-fraud-and-contaminated-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Food safety: the EU presents TraceMap, the AI against fraud and contaminated food"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels &#8211; The <strong>European Commission<\/strong> today (10 March) unveiled <strong>TraceMap<\/strong>, a new <strong>artificial intelligence<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/food.ec.europa.eu\/food-safety\/acn\/tracemap_en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">platform&nbsp;<\/a>designed to <strong>speed up and improve the detection of food fraud, contaminated products and foodborne disease outbreaks<\/strong> across the European Union. The Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare, <strong>Oliv\u00e9r V\u00e1rhelyi<\/strong>, called it &#8220;a game-changer that will revolutionise the EU&#8217;s ability to respond to food safety crises,&#8221; noting that competent authorities will have access to the AI platform starting today.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Technically, TraceMap will <strong>simplify access to critical data<\/strong> for product food safety and speed up its analysis. &#8220;Before the introduction of this tool, tracing food along the production chain required physical documents and direct exchanges between various national authorities, which took time and resources,&#8221; reads the Berlymont Palace <a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/commission\/presscorner\/detail\/en\/ip_26_584\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">press release<\/a>.&nbsp;TraceMap, on the other hand, will provide <strong>immediate digital access to various European databases<\/strong> containing critical information on products traded within the EU (the main ones being the <a href=\"https:\/\/food.ec.europa.eu\/food-safety\/rasff_en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed<\/a> (RASFF) and the <a href=\"https:\/\/food.ec.europa.eu\/horizontal-topics\/traces_en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Trade Control and Expert System<\/a> (TRACES)). Once a potential risk has been identified, the new AI platform will also make it easier to <strong>monitor the entire food supply chain<\/strong>, from producers to shipping services to points of sale. In this way, <strong>recalls<\/strong> of unsafe or fraudulent food\u2014especially for products from non-EU countries\u2014can take place more quickly.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The introduction of TraceMap\u2014whose pilot version has already been tested in the recall of infant formula from China produced with contaminated ARA oil\u2014is in line with the call for strengthened food safety measures&nbsp;<span style=\"margin: 0px;padding: 0px\">in the<a href=\"https:\/\/agriculture.ec.europa.eu\/overview-vision-agriculture-food\/vision-agriculture-and-food_en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&nbsp;Vision for Agriculture and Food<\/a><\/span>&nbsp;strategy presented by the Commission in February 2025. After all, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/health\/2026\/03\/10\/the-european-union-launches-new-ai-tool-to-boost-food-safety-controls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the latest data<\/a> on food safety in Europe are clear: according to the RASFF, in 2024, <strong>reports of contaminated products<\/strong> reached <strong>5,250<\/strong>, a <strong>12 per cent increase<\/strong> on the previous year. A third of these involved the rejection of suspicious foodstuffs at customs, with <strong>Italy (965)<\/strong>, the <strong>Netherlands (1155)<\/strong> and <strong>Germany (1907)<\/strong> recording the highest numbers. Regarding <strong>foodborne diseases<\/strong>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.efsa.europa.eu\/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">European Food Safety Authority<\/a> (EFSA) received <strong>6,558 outbreak reports<\/strong> in 2024, <strong>a 14.5 per cent increase<\/strong> compared to 2023. The most common diseases included campylobacteriosis, salmonellosis, Escherichia coli infections and listeriosis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The new platform presented by the Commission will simplify access to data critical to food safety and speed up recalls of contaminated products. According to Health Commissioner Oliv\u00e9r V\u00e1rhelyi, &#8220;it will revolutionise the EU&#8217;s ability to respond to food safety crises&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7899,"featured_media":226920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[30961],"tags":[25871,33328,26787,25860,27429,26640,26620,33329],"class_list":["post-447238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-salute-en","tag-contaminazioni","tag-food","tag-safety-food-en","tag-frodi-en","tag-health","tag-oliver-varhelyi-en","tag-tracemap"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7899"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":447239,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447238\/revisions\/447239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}