FAIRCHAIN addresses the growing need for a significant transformation of current food systems by developing competitive intermediate food chain alternatives adapted to small and mid-sized actors. FAIRCHAIN specifically aims to: -Foster the emergence of innovative intermediate food value chains that support the scaling-up of small and mid-sized actors facing unsustainable conventional dominant agri-food system. This requires to specific technological, organisational and social innovations as well as regulatory and policy adaptations to widely deliver food in a fair and sustainable way. -Inspire and encourage larger actors to down-scale conventional food value chains and better address the growing need of consumers to consume local high quality and safe products. The emergence of intermediate food value chains should put pressure on dominant actors, forcing them to align with best practices in terms of offering opportunities to local suppliers and ensuring an equitable distribution of costs and benefits. The main goal of FAIRCHAIN is to test, pilot and demonstrate recently developed technological, organisational and social innovations, realising a shift up to TRL7 and enabling small and mid-sized actors to scale-up and expand the production of affordable nutritious food in competitive intermediate food value chains. FAIRCHAIN will address the dairy and fruit&vegetable sectors, which hold a strategic economic position in Europe. Both are prone to integrate a large variety of innovations, correspond to an increasing consumer demand for nutritious and healthy food and need to meet the challenge of sustainably delivering perishable commodities to consumers. FAIRCHAIN will consider the entire value chain. More focus is given to postharvest steps rather than the production step in itself because the power imbalances created in market relationships are mainly attributed to the increasing concentration in the processing and retail sectors in conventional food supply chains

Agri-food chain actors lack objective, robust and reliable information to meet consumer expectations in relation to the multiple aspects of intrinsic quality of livestock products from the various European husbandry systems. The goal of INTAQT project is to perform an in-depth multi-criteria assessment of the relationships between husbandry systems and intrinsic quality traits of animal-sourced products. This will be achieved through the development of quality assessment and authentication tools, to provide science-based decision support for policy makers, industries, farmers and consumers as well as develop means to improve husbandry practices complying with high quality of animal products and sustainability of production, defined as the "One Quality" of products. INTAQT will focus on unprocessed and processed ready-to-eat chicken meat, beef, and dairy products stemming from a gradient of extensive to intensive husbandry systems from a wide variety of European countries. The project will use a multi-actor participatory approach, involving all actors of the agri-food chains from farmers to consumers, scientists, certification bodies, policy makers and citizens. The challenges addressed are to: i) develop comprehensive models quantifying the impact of husbandry systems on quality traits related to product safety, nutritional value and sensory features, ii) co-construct with agri-food chain actors rapid and cost-effective innovative and practical analytical tools for the prediction of the intrinsic quality of livestock products and authentication of the associated husbandry systems, iii) co-construct with agri-food chain actors, multi-criteria scoring tools of the intrinsic quality of products, and iv) using all these developed tools, promote innovative husbandry practices (approved by agri-food chain actors) to achieve consistently and verifiable excellent quality, safe, healthy and tasty animal-based products from both extensive and intensive husbandry systems.