New info appears daily studies, news, and trends. Hidden in the noise could be the first sign of a food safety issue. Food experts need to stay ahead. Every day, food safety experts sift through news, reports, and research to spot early warning signs. With the right food safety tool, they can do it faster and more efficiently.
Why a Smart Food Safety Tool Matters
For the Federal Office for Food Safety and Veterinary Affairs (FSVO) in Switzerland, spotting those signals early is critical. It’s their job to catch risks before they become real threats—to protect public health through foresight, not just response.
But staying ahead of emerging issues is no small task.
The Challenge: Information Overload, Limited Time
Each morning, food safety experts manually scan dozens of sources—newsletters, websites, scientific journals, even social media—for anything new, unusual, or potentially concerning.
Their goal? To identify trends and signals worth investigating.
This research feeds into Seismo Info, a monthly briefing that highlights the most relevant topics detected by FSVO’s internal experts. But with so much information out there—and few people to analyze it—valuable time is lost every day. The team can only check a limited number of sources, and their time is consumed by filtering what might be relevant from what’s not.
The Opportunity: Make Risk Detection Smarter
“We don’t want to replace our experts—we want to give them superpowers.”
The idea? A web-based tool that could handle the initial filtering—scanning a growing list of trusted websites, identifying potentially relevant articles, and presenting them in a simple, structured interface.
The Solution: A Two-Part System to Accelerate Insight
1. Automated Data Retrieval
The system continuously gathers fresh content from selected sources. It applies smart filters to flag articles that are new, controversial, unexpected, or particularly relevant—the kind FSVO is always on the lookout for.
2. A Clean, Powerful Web Interface
The results are displayed in a user-friendly web portal designed with and for FSVO users. It’s fast, focused, and flexible—helping them scan, sort, and evaluate content in minutes, not hours.
And importantly, the platform doesn’t make the decisions—it empowers the experts who do. Final judgment on a topic’s relevance remains with experts.
Built with People in Mind
Throughout the project, we worked closely with FSVO team to fine-tune the tool’s behavior. Many of the platform’s features came directly from real user feedback.
A Tool to Help Other Experts
This project isn’t just about food safety. It’s about how the right technology can elevate public service—not by replacing human expertise, but by making it faster, smarter, and more focused.
With this new tool, they can monitor more sources, catch more signals, and stay even further ahead of potential risks.
Food safety begins with information. We’re helping FSVO find the right pieces faster.
Today after this project we have the possibility to apply it to other type of research and analysis projects. If you work on something similar where your time is put in research and finding important information, contact me and let us discuss.
Main article : Seismo Scraping from HumanTech Insitute
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