Australia — New Food Innovation Centre On Defecnce Menu Card

The Min­is­ter for Defence Sci­ence and Per­son­nel War­ren Snow­don today fore­shad­owed a new part­ner­ship focused on estab­lish­ing a joint Research Cen­tre in Food Inno­va­tion.
The Research Cen­tre will draw on facil­i­ties and exper­tise from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tas­ma­nia, CSIRO’s Divi­sion of Food and Nutri­tion­al Sci­ences and the Defence Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy Organ­i­sa­tion (DSTO).

“The Research Cen­tre in Food Inno­va­tion would be able to sup­port and enhance the research activ­i­ties at DSTO Scotts­dale which pro­vides a ded­i­cat­ed food sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy capa­bil­i­ty for Defence,” Mr Snow­don said. 

“The new cen­tre, togeth­er with the rede­vel­op­ment of the Scotts­dale facil­i­ty, is expect­ed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhance DSTO’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide the ADF with state-of-the-art sup­port on nutri­tion and feed­ing strategies.” 

“It will draw on the syn­er­gies between DSTO, CSIRO and UTAS to devel­op nov­el approach­es to nutri­tion and food sci­ence that will ben­e­fit the per­for­mance of ADF per­son­nel as well as the needs of the wider Aus­tralian community.” 

Mr Snow­don was speak­ing at the open­ing of the Inter­na­tion­al Sym­po­sium on Defence Nutri­tion in Scotts­dale (north­ern Tas­ma­nia) where experts from Aus­tralia, USA, Nor­way, New Zealand and Sin­ga­pore have gath­ered to dis­cuss strate­gies for the future devel­op­ment of mil­i­tary nutri­tion and food science. 

“This sym­po­sium pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to address crit­i­cal nutri­tion issues such as the poten­tial for high pres­sure pro­cess­ing to pro­duce safe, long-last­ing, tasty and nutri­tious foods for com­bat rations, and the use of nan­otech­nol­o­gy for ‘smart’ pack­ag­ing of ration items,” Mr Snow­don said. 

Out­comes from the sym­po­sium will inform the pro­gram of the pro­posed food inno­va­tion centre. 

Mr Snow­don said the new cen­tre could allow Scotts­dale to grow research capa­bil­i­ties in food sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, pro­vide access to a broad­er pool of experts, and fos­ter an enriched sci­ence envi­ron­ment for staff. 

“The Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment is ful­ly com­mit­ted to the growth of DSTO Scotts­dale as a mod­ern food sci­ence facil­i­ty for the ben­e­fit of the Aus­tralian Defence Force,” he said. 

“On a broad­er lev­el, the new cen­tre could pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits for the local agri­cul­tur­al indus­try, local man­u­fac­ture of ingre­di­ents, small busi­ness devel­op­ment in Tas­ma­nia and employ­ment opportunities. 

“It is like­ly to be a win-win result for the three organ­i­sa­tions involved, but also for indus­try and the Tas­man­ian econ­o­my,” said the Mem­ber for Bass, Geoff Lyons. 

Media Con­tacts:
Alice Plate (Min­is­ter Snow­don): 0400 045 999
Car­men East­ley (Geoff Lyons) 0400 551 940
Steve D’Arcy (DSTO) 0419 991 909
Defence Media Oper­a­tions: 02 6127 1999 or 0408 498 664 

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia 

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