On March 31, 2016, European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) announced the publication of a commissioned study aimed at identification of priorities for future work in the area of food safety. A three-round iterative survey based on the Delphi methodology was carried out, involving more than 200 European experts. The respondents were asked to identify and rate the topics according to several preselected criteria, such as the potential contribution to risk assessment activities or harmonization.
28 key topics were identified and grouped in five categories: Nutrition, chemical, microbiological and environmental risk assessment, and a generic category incorporating cross-cutting issues. The highlighted priority issues include, among others, establishment of common data collection schemes across Europe, health risk assessment of chemical mixtures, risk assessment of aggregated exposure from environment and food, development of standard biomarkers of intake of or exposure to contaminants, development of standard risk-benefit assessment methodologies for foods, and harmonization of chemical risk assessment methods.
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EFSA (March 31, 2016). “Study identifies key topics for future work in food safety.”
Rowe, G., and Bolger, F. (2016). “Final report on ‘the identification of food safety priorities using the Delphi technique.’” External Scientific Report, EFSA-Q-2015-00348 (pdf)
