FLAIR-FLOW EUROPE: a novel dissemination project

Carrying out a research project normally embraces project planning, seeking funds, doing the actual research, disseminating the results and, lastly, seeking exploitation of the findings. Of these five steps, the last two are usually by far the most difficult and were the reason for setting up the ongoing (1991-6) Flair-Flow Europe project. The objective of Flair-Flow is to assist with, and improve, the dissemination of results from European Union (EU) food research programmes to end-users, and especially to small and medium-sized food enterprises (food SMEs). Flair-Flow is a co-operative project of the EU AAIR (Agriculture and Agro-Industry Research) and VALUE (Valorisation for Europe) programmes and is operational in 17 countries, that is the 15 EU states, with Norway and Iceland. The progress of Flair-Flow has been reported in a number of articles and is updated here.