Partner 02

FERA is an Executive Agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Its overarching purpose is to support and develop a sustainable food chain, a healthy natural environment, and to protect the global community from biological and chemical risks. Fera has around 900 staff of which over 550 are scientists and 150 plant and bee inspectors. It has a budget of around £68 million. The majority of staff are based in a state-of-the-art laboratory on the outskirts of York. Fera provides services to customers in over 100 countries and runs over 600 research projects. Fera has extensive experience in EU framework projects, both as a coordinator and a partner. Fera represents the UK on a number of key European and International Committees relating to methods of analysis and regulatory issues (e.g. EFSA, CEN, CODEX, AOAC) and is a designated National Reference Laboratory, hosting the National Collection of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria (NCPPB) as well as key reference collections of phytoplasmas, arthropods and nematodes of statutory importance.

Fera will lead WP3 (Quality Standards) and participate in WP2 (Inventory), WP4 (Access), WP5 (Info-portal) and WP6 (Reference collections) and WP7 (Dissemination).