25 years of working for safe food: The Heinrich Stockmeyer Foundation celebrates its anniversary

The production of food has always been subject to particularly high quality standards. The Heinrich Stockmeyer Foundation has made it its mission to support this claim and contribute to the promotion of food safety. The initial spark was provided by the emergence of a new form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in Great Britain, which was to develop into the global BSE crisis in the following years. As a group of companies specializing in the production of foodstuffs, heristo in the form of the Heinrich Stockmeyer Foundation thus assumes a high degree of social responsibility and at the same time makes an essential contribution to improving consumer protection in the areas of food and nutrition.

In the early years, workshops were still the foundation's most important activity: Representatives from science, business, politics and consumer protection regularly gave talks and discussed highly topical issues relating to food safety. The Foundation was thus particularly committed to making current research findings accessible to a broad public. In the following years, the foundation increasingly shifted its focus and dedicated itself to promoting selected research projects and supporting young scientists. "Much of the work is practice-oriented and directly serves to promote consumer protection. In addition, young people are motivated and special scientific achievements are honored," explains Heinrich W. Risken, Chairman of the Board of heristo and Chairman of the Foundation. As a result, the foundation has awarded numerous science prizes, prizes for young scientists and scholarships.

25,000 euros for corona research

Supported by a board of trustees made up of respected figures from the food industry and food research, the foundation has also set itself the goal of addressing very topical issues. In September, Prof. Dr. Dr. Manfred Gareis, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, presented a grant of 25,000 euros to representatives of the University of Leipzig. The Institute of Food Hygiene there and the Institute of Virology at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine are working together on a joint project to investigate the stability of the coronavirus on surfaces. This highly topical issue plays a major role in assessing the risk - with the support of the Heinrich Stockmeyer Foundation, important findings are being gained here. "A major advantage of the Heinrich Stockmeyer Foundation is that we can focus our activities very quickly and actively on relevant issues of food safety and consumer protection," says Prof. Gareis. "Promoting scientific research into the coronavirus is therefore a matter of course for the foundation due to the particular threat situation."