SASEL Lab
SASEL Lab
SASEL Lab
A Horizon Europe project building a resilient European food chain against intentional and accidental chemical, biological, and radiological contamination through AI, advanced detection, and multi-stakeholder collaboration. McGill leads two WP5 tasks on knowledge management and adaptive training.
DEFENSEFOOD is a Horizon Europe project that addresses one of the most under-examined threats to European public health and critical infrastructure: the intentional and accidental contamination of the food supply chain with chemical, biological, and radiological (CBR) agents. The World Health Organization ranks food-system contamination among the primary global public health threats of the 21st century, and recent geopolitical developments, including hybrid warfare activity and climate-driven shifts in food systems, have sharpened the urgency.
The project moves European food safety practice from a reactive posture to a proactive and preventive one. It integrates AI-driven horizon scanning, Earth observation, advanced laboratory detection, simulation-based decision support, behavioural science, and cross-border capacity building into a single resilience framework. The framework is tested on three high-vulnerability supply chains: cereals, shellfish, and water.
The consortium brings together 13 partners across 9 countries, including national food safety authorities, research institutes, a defence university, and industry federations, with an External Expert Advisory Board that includes EFSA, Europol, OPCW, and IAEA.
DEFENSEFOOD is built around three measurable dimensions of food chain resilience: the time factors (incubation, detection, recovery), the degree of impact of a shock, and the degree of recovery. The project operationalises these dimensions across six thematic work packages that trace the full arc of a contamination event, from anticipation through detection, impact reduction, learning, and knowledge management.
Three supply chains were selected for their distinct vulnerability profiles and combined reach across the wider food system.
DEFENSEFOOD extends the lab’s ongoing work on AI-enabled decision support for food systems, linking directly to our programs on food systems financing intelligence, digital tools for agri-food traceability, and capacity building in food safety. The blueprint and training tool developed under DEFENSEFOOD will be reusable beyond the CBR context, applicable to broader food safety and food security challenges that the lab addresses across European and African contexts.
Several consortium partners are already collaborators of the lab through related Horizon Europe projects, including FCI4Africa and FS4Africa (with WR, RFF, Ubuntoo, and UniBw Munich), providing strong foundations for cross-project synergy.
McGill University leads two tasks in Work Package 5 (Knowledge Management) and contributes to three additional tasks across WP4, WP5, and WP6. The work sits at the intersection of systems thinking, AI-enabled knowledge synthesis, and adaptive capacity building, translating the scientific outputs of the consortium into usable tools for food system actors.
McGill leads the development of a comprehensive Food Threat Management Blueprint that synthesises knowledge and insights from the literature, the three use cases, and consortium-wide stakeholder consultation. The blueprint uses systems thinking and process mapping to create a holistic framework covering the key components, processes, and interventions needed for effective food threat anticipation, detection, response, and mitigation. Development proceeds through two stages: knowledge synthesis from the curated platform and stakeholder inputs, followed by expert-tuned consolidation into an augmented, operational blueprint.
McGill leads the design and development of an adaptive learning tool that assesses organisational and individual capabilities in food threat management and delivers personalised training paths. The tool is built as three integrated components:
The tool is designed to interface directly with the Knowledge Platform and Solution Engine (T5.1) and serves stakeholders across industry, policy, emergency response, academia, technology providers, and the public.
EFSA, Europol, OPCW, IAEA, and independent experts provide strategic, scientific, ethical, and security oversight.
Research Areas
Sustainable Criminal Justice Solutions Europe (SCJS)
Belgium (Coordinator)
Syreon Research Institute
Hungary (Scientific Coordinator)
Stichting Wageningen Research (WFSR / WECR)
Netherlands
Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM)
Netherlands
Ubuntoo BV
Netherlands
Reframe Food (RFF)
Greece
Sciensano
Belgium
Universität der Bundeswehr München
Germany
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)
Italy
Federación Española de Industrias de la Alimentación y Bebidas (FIAB)
Spain
Fraunhofer IGD
Germany
National Food Chain Safety Office (Nebih)
Hungary
European Commission, Horizon Europe (Cluster 3, Civil Security for Society)
HORIZON-CL3-2024-DRS-01-01