Vegicereus

Why this project?

Food safety remains an absolute top priority for the food industry. Ensuring food safety is not only essential for operating a food business, but also a crucial prerequisite for access to both domestic and international markets.

At the same time, we observe significant shifts in consumer behaviour. In a world where everything is moving faster and people have less time to cook, the demand for ready to eat foods continues to grow. In addition, plant based food has gained strong momentum, with an increasingly wide range of plant based products becoming available. This project specifically focuses on safeguarding the microbial food safety of ready to eat, plant based foods, starting already at the product development stage.

At present, food companies ensure the microbial safety of ready to eat foods primarily through challenge testing. These tests determine microbial growth during storage following the deliberate contamination of a ready to eat product under a relevant time–temperature combination. However, this approach is highly specific to a particular product and temperature profile. Challenge tests are also time consuming, resource intensive, require specialised laboratory facilities, and are therefore relatively expensive.

Vegicereus was initiated in response to the need for more efficient, scientifically substantiated tools that can already be applied during product development.

Research approach and expected results

Vegicereus is a collective research, development and knowledge dissemination project (COOCK+).

The project consortium aims to develop and implement computational tools that support food companies in safeguarding microbial food safety during the development of new ready to eat, plant based foods. The focus is on predicting the growth of two relevant foodborne pathogens, Bacillus cereus and Listeria monocytogenes, to levels that do not pose a risk to food safety. This is achieved by making informed choices regarding product formulations and storage conditions.

• For heat treated, psychrotrophic B. cereus spores, several steps are carried out, including strain screening, data generation, modelling and validation, to develop a predictive model. This model, based on the gamma concept, is validated in plant based foods belonging to four different categories: (i) protein rich matrices, (ii) starch rich matrices, (iii) polysaccharide rich structured matrices, and (iv) vegetable based matrices.
• For L. monocytogenes, the predictive model is based on existing models and is validated in the same four categories of plant based foods.

The project will deliver two predictive growth models (computational tools) that food companies can use independently after appropriate training and support. These tools enable companies to safeguard microbial food safety more efficiently and already at an early stage of product development.

Target group

This project is aimed at:

• Food companies that place ready-to-eat and ready to cook plant based foods on the market, stored under chilled conditions. This includes both conventional products such as mashed potatoes or prepared meals, as well as innovative products such as vegetarian spreads, plant based meat alternatives, and plant based cold cuts or dairy alternatives.
• Suppliers and producers of ingredients and additives
• Consultants providing quality and food safety services
• Retailers

Project partners

Flanders’ FOOD coordinates the project. The project is carried out in collaboration with Ghent University, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Food Microbiology and Food Preservation research group, led by Prof. Frank Devlieghere (Frank.Devlieghere@UGent.be).

Keen to join?

The project started in April 2025 and will run until March 2028 (project duration: 3 years). To ensure the results are as relevant as possible for the industry, the project is supported by a advisory board composed of food companies, ingredient suppliers and retailers. Participation in the advisory board is possible until the end of the project.

Participation fee and terms and conditions

Participation is subject to the following conditions: 

• Membership of Flanders’ FOOD for the duration of the project 
• Project contribution, depending on company size:
  • Large enterprises (LE): 30.000 EUR or 10.000 EUR per year
  • Medium sized enterprises (ME): 15.000 EUR or 5.000 EUR per year
  • Small enterprises (SE): 7.500 EUR or 2.500 EUR per year

Companies joining the project at a later stage will be charged the project contribution and Flanders’ FOOD membership retroactively.