€21 Million Irish Investment in ‘Milk Mining’
The Irish Government has announced a second term of funding worth €21 million for the functional foods Technology Centre, Food for Health Ireland (FHI). The Department of Jobs, Enterpriseand Innovation, through Enterprise Ireland will invest €16 million in FHI with the remaining €5 million being provided by the companies involved in the research centre – Carbery, Dairygold, Glanbia, Kerry Group, and the Irish Dairy Board.
Promoting a healthy diet for a healthy life, FHI ‘mines’ milk to identify novel bioactive ingredients to develop functional foods which will offer health benefits to consumers. FHI is increasing its focus on infant nutrition, healthy cheese, sports drinks, ‘healthy aging’ drinks and products that can be used to manage Type 2 diabetes and obesity using the €21 million it has received for its second research phase.
Jens Bleiel, chief executive of FHI, says: “The first 5-year term of FHI has shown for example, how milk protein-based nutritional supplements can assist in the prevention of age-related muscle loss in people aged 50-70 years. We’ve also seen interesting results from our second human intervention study into the effects of a new milk based ingredient on glycemic management in 40-65 year olds that are either overweight but healthy, or have Type 2 non-insulin dependent diabetes.”
Jens Bleiel adds: “Through the research conducted by research teams at UCD, UCC, UL, Teagasc, NUI G, NUI M and DCU, FHI is bringing an array of promising ingredients into this second phase of our work and an important part of our funding will be used to conduct human intervention studies to test the health benefits of these ingredients. We look forward to seeing them on the market where consumers can reap the benefits of this research.”
There are more than 300 companies inIrelandengaged with 15 technology centres. These industry-led research centres of excellence operate at the interface between industry and the academic environment to increase the generation of new, commercially viable knowledge. They currently focus on developing new technologies in the areas of cloud, analytics and learning technologies; manufacturing and materials; energy; food and health and financial services and business processes.
