Project acronym: MONIQA
Funded by: EC
Call: FP6-2005-FOOD-4-A
Agreement ID: 36337
From 2007-02-01 to 2012-01-31
Total cost: EUR 12 400 000
EU contribution: EUR 12 300 000
Coordinated by: ICC (Austria)

The MONIQA (Towards harmonisation regarding monitoring the hazards in the food supply chain?) NoE seeks to establish durable integration of leading research institutions, industrial partners and SMES working in complementary fields of detections and methods for food quality and safety. MONIQA aims at overcoming European and worldwide fragmentation in food quality and safety (Q and S) research by integrating key organisations in a core consortium. Benefits through dissemination and joint research will also be available to associated partners (=associates). The core consortium (=partners / members) seek to establish mechanisms for coordinating and finally merging research activities, personnel and infrastructure. The industry and SME sector will benefit through application of the harmonised detection method and technologies, as will the consumers of high quality and safe food. The core consortium comprises a network of 30 members. The geographic diversity covers 11 EU member states (19 partners), 2 Associated Candidate Countries (3 partners), 2 Associated countries (2 partners), 1 MPC country (1 partner) and 4 Asian/Oceanic countries (5 partners). From the 30 members, 12 are research institutions, 11 are centres of higher education (HE), 2 are industry partners and 5 are other organisations (NGO, small companies). Seven SMES are full partners in the consortium. Ten of the partners have a female leader (about 30%). A total of 174 researchers and doctoral students are planned for integration into the network with more than 40% of female researchers and more than 55% of female PhD students. Using the calculation provided in the Guideline, this results in a calculated Grant for Integration of 2,840,000 per year or 14,200,000 for a duration of 5 years.