There’s a new lab at McGill dedicated to the study of chemical contaminants in what we eat. The Food and Chemical Exposome Associated Laboratory, or FOCAL, is a collaboration between the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (FAES) and France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) and Oniris VetAgroBio Nantes. It was inaugurated on June 12 with an event at Macdonald Campus, which will act as the lab’s Quebec base.
“Major public health challenges have no borders, and scientific answers should not have any either,” said Salwa Karboune, Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and Associate Vice‑President of the Macdonald Campus.
“By combining the expertise of McGill, INRAE and Oniris, FOCAL places international collaboration at the service of a question that concerns each and every one of us. This is research rooted in reality, with a truly international scope,” she said.
Exposures through food
Every day, we ingest pesticides, environmental pollutants, packaging contaminants and processing residues. Some are well known; others less so. FOCAL aims to help categorize contaminants through cutting-edge technologies in chemical analysis and data processing.
Team members will be able to detect tens of thousands of chemicals in foods and study their links with the development of chronic diseases. The goal: to produce concrete and useful knowledge for public health authorities.
“We now have the tools to detect thousands of chemical substances in food in a single analysis. FOCAL allows us to put this capability at the service of a question that affects everyone: how can we reduce our exposure to harmful chemical substances present in our diet?” said Stéphane Bayen, Associate Professor in the Department of Food Science and Agricultural Chemistry and co‑director of the FOCAL.
Strong collaboration, shared ambitions
FOCAL builds on a collaboration initiated in 2018 between the FAES and LABERCA, a specialized laboratory of INRAE, and Oniris VetAgroBio Nantes. Since then, the two teams have published together, co-supervised students and carried out a jointly supervised international PhD. The formation of FOCAL formalizes and expands the relationship.
“Researcher and student mobility is at the heart of our ambition,” said Gaud Dervilly, Deputy Director of the LABERCA Joint Research Unit (INRAE/Oniris VetAgroBio) and co‑director of FOCAL.
“By promoting exchanges, joint supervision and the sharing of expertise, FOCAL will help train a new generation of scientists capable of working in international and interdisciplinary networks.”