Master in Food Safety and Food Risk Management

The Programme

The Master’s Degree in Food Safety and Food Risk Management is offered within the area of Food Sciences and Technologies and is aimed at preparing a Food Safety expert, a specific figure dedicated to risk assessment and management of flood risks, in a modern perspective that includes all the recent acquisitions of all the sciences connected to it, which include not only chemistry, technology, and microbiology of food, but also nutrition, toxicology, law, economics, logistics, mathematics.

The course will be offered with a first common year, at the University of Parma, and in the second year three different curricula in three different universities of the region: Risk Mitigation (Catholic University of Piacenza, in collaboration with the University of Parma), Agri-Food Safety (University of Modena e Reggio Emilia), Risk Management (University of Bologna, in collaboration with the University of Ferrara).

In the first common year, students will learn about risk characterization and exposure assessment in food, food technology, and microbiology as related to safety aspects, which are the biological hazards and the xenobiotics in food, and the hazard identification in primary production, together with elements of food law and international policies, biostatistics, and bioethics.

In the curriculum of Risk Mitigation, students will deepen their knowledge on the modalities of mitigation of risk in food production, the mitigation of process-related toxicants, which are the emerging risks, and about food allergens.

In the curriculum of Agri-Food Safety, students will deepen knowledge on the management of post-harvest diseases, animal pests in stored agri-food products, mycotoxigenic fungi in agri-food, pesticide contamination, together with the use of biotechnology and agronomy for safety and identity preservation of agrifood products.

In the curriculum of Risk Management, students will deepen knowledge in advanced food technology and food process and advanced and predictive food microbiology as a way to manage the risk, together with elements of farm biosecurity and foodborne risk and the risk assessment of food products to human health.

The 2nd semester of the 2nd year will be fully dedicated to the thesis work, under the joint supervision between Universities and food companies, governmental and EU institutions. The degree qualification will be successfully gained after the elaboration and defense of original thesis work and will be officially awarded by the five universities, so it will be valid as a Second Cycle (MSc) degree of University of Parma, Piacenza, Bologna, Modena e Reggio Emilia and Ferrara.

Further information HERE