To innovate you must share knowledge

Chr. Hansen enjoys playing a very active role in the scientific community. The company firmly believes that it is crucial to share scientific knowledge in order to continously innovate. And innovation is key if the long-term goal is to produce better foods for people all over the world.

"Our research basically entails finding out what the secret behind healthy food is. We believe that the key to better and safer food products is to understand food?s genetic composition."

Eric Johansen, PhD, Vice President at Chr. Hansen and responsible for Molecular Microbiology, is the man behind this statement. He heads a team of researchers that are currently work-ing on mapping out and analyzing the total genetic material of a number of food microorganisms. The ambitious objective of this team effort is to increase the quality of food and life for people around the globe.

"Of course it is important that we excel in our core biotechnology competence area," says Johansen. "However, building knowledge is not enough. To really innovate we must also know how to share this knowledge with others."

Chr. Hansen plays an active role

Consequently, Chr. Hansen is playing a very active role in the scientific community, and regularly engages in activities such as sponsoring and presenting papers at scientific congresses. Chr. Hansen has also contributed to the writing of textbooks, such as the newly published Probiotic Dairy Products, which was released in January of this year. Chr. Hansen's contribu-tion to the contents of this book constitutes two chapters out of a total of nine.

"Our motivation for publishing our work in books, scientific journals and at scientific congresses is to ensure that this industry holds and maintains high scientific standards," explains Johansen.

Exchanging ideas is of paramount importance

To illustrate the surge in demand for Chr. Hansen's know-how, the company was recently asked to lecture at an international congress at LMC, which is scheduled for March 2006 in Denmark, as well as Pig Asia 2006, which will take place in Bangkok the very same month.

At Pig Asia, Chr. Hansen's animal health experts have been invited to lecture on probiotics, whereas at LMC, Chr. Hansen's head of Corporate Research, Peter Olesen, PhD, has been asked to give a talk on nutrigenomics and health. Moreover, Johansen has been appointed chairman for a session entitled Future food for health, which will feature talks by five industry experts as well as an introduction by Johansen himself.

"We believe in sharing our knowledge about cutting-edge science in order to provide the best possible conditions for future innovation, exchange of ideas and networking opportunities in this important research area," says Johansen. "By increasing our visibility, we hope to be seen as a serious scientific partner, which will hopefully enable us to gain access to the latest results in research, and increase our chances of entering into fruitful future partnerships, which eventually will facilitate the prevention of lifestyle-induced diseases globally."