September 18th, 2015 Different by Nature, Organic by Choice – 11.50 am, Prof. Luca Maria Chiesa and Prof. Sara Panseri of the Università di Milano: “Food safety in organic meat supply chains and nutritional values”

During our conference next September 18th, at the Theatre of the Earth, in the Biodiversity Park, Professors Sara Panseri and Luca Maria Chiesa of the Department of Veterinary Science and Public Health of the Università di Milano will report on “Food safety in organic meat supply chains and nutritional values”.

The term “organic” refers to products, whether plant or animal, obtained through a production method that does not resort to synthetic products and which follows a set of rules that constrain how the producer operates.

More specifically, the concept of organic animal husbandry is to breed respecting the animal, the environment and the consumer. The animals on the farm are important because: they close the ecological cycle of the company, they provide manure, fertilizer for the soil and main source of organic matter in organic farming, they produce milk, meat and their derivatives, and they require forage areas, thus preventing crop rotations which are too intensive and promoting soil fertility.

From the consumer’s the point of view, attention should be focused on the nutritional characteristics and the contamination levels of residues, such as pesticides, antibiotics, etc. in meat obtained from organic farms. The investigation involved the nutritional characteristics of different types of meat from organic farms together with elements of food safety (presence of pesticides, persistent contaminants in the environment and antibiotic substances) in order to provide the consumer with correct information in a perspective of food safety along the supply chain.