Meeting with Ashkhen Shirvanyan Deputy

Minister in the Ministry of Economy of

Armenia

On September 7th was organized meeting with Ashkhen Shirvanyan Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Economy of Armenia, Marianna Khachatryan, Head of the Food Safety Department of the RA Ministry of Economy, Danik Martirosyan, PhD, from Functional Food Center (USA), Meruzhan Zadayan, PhD, from "Center for Agricultural Research and Certification" SNCO, Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Armenia). Main objective of this meeting was Functional Food Centers/Functional Food Institute’s 31st International Conference and EXPO in Yerevan, Armenia at the Yerevan State University, which is scheduled on September 29th -to October 1st, 2023. Here are some points from discussion:

Dr. Martirosyan in detail provided information how Functional Food Center (FFC) organized 30 international conferences in the best universities in US, as well as in Japan, Germany, China, Greece, etc. And even more one conference was partnered with United States Department of Agriculture.

1. Functional Food Products as the highest level of healthy foods should be made on the bases of scientific research, with positive results in animal model as well as in human trials, with epidemiological investigations as well as after market study. Research on functional foods certainly should be published in open access journal so doctors, governmental employees, as well as regular people have access to that and be prepared for the future functional foods.
2. Ashkhen Shirvanyan and Marianna Khachatryan interested more what would be practical results of Agrarian Section of Ministry, as well as Armenia in whole from this engagement. Dr. Zadayan is more interested in knowing how to make animal products healthier and more functional.
   - Dr. Martirosyan discussed the success stories about functional food products and Functional Food Center/Functional Food Institute in US, that FFC founded many scientific journals in this field, among those two are already in Scopus and Web of Science, the highest level of scientific journals. This could be very interesting for those scientists from the agrarian section and academic research institutes for publication their results in this field. This will help to make science more attractive. Government as well as regular people will see practical result from science and scientists from Academia as well as joint collaboration between scientists and food manufacturers.
3. Also, it was mentioned that since Armenia is a small country it would be very beneficial to produce highest level of healthy food for their citizens as well as for the market where functional foods has much more benefits than regular healthy foods, but also price will be much effective for functional foods manufacturers (1.5 to 3 times or more functional foods are more expensive).
4. Finally, it was discussed how practically to start and continue collaboration between organizations (parties), to make sure it will not all be forgotten after the conference. It was mentioned that Functional Food Center is leading organization for the education, and theoretical aspect how to create functional foods, how to be classified, as well as evaluate functional food products.
5. The deputy minister was more interested in practical aspects of healthy and functional food products, how to practically start investigations, how long will take to come up with perfect formulations and what would be the cost of that. All those questions were slightly discussed and agreed that it would be great to start with detail plans how parties could collaborate and step by step moving to the ideal functional food product for health and general population.M.H.Zadayan