Guest Author: Hana Mušinović, phd

A nutritionist makes sure that what you eat is nutritionally the best choice for you and in line with your goals. However, a nutritionist is not a food safety expert. That’s why I asked my friend, Dr. Hana Mušinović, to write an article about the work of EFSA, the European Food Safety Authority.

Hana recently worked at EFSA, in the Department of International Scientific Cooperation. She says it was fascinating to witness the interconnectedness of the whole world in action and to experience how science erases borders between countries, people, and cultures. By comparing EFSA with other food safety systems, she concludes that in Europe we can rely on one of the highest standards in the world.

Food safety has already been discussed in one of the previous guest articles about incidents in the food industry. This article focuses on the elements of EFSA’s work.

Why write about food safety?

Writing about food safety and explaining how that safety system works is extremely important to ensure public trust in the work of responsible institutions and to reduce possible fears about the safety of the food we eat. In fact, this is one of EFSA’s fundamental tasks.

The European Union market is a vast area where food products, on one hand, are strictly controlled, but on the other, circulate relatively freely, feeding more than 500 million citizens. Ensuring a safe food supply has always been a challenge, and the rise of globalization has raised the bar even higher. We saw this in the early 1990s when the EU was hit by a series of food safety crises (mad cow disease, salmonella, dioxins…). Repeated problems clearly revealed shortcomings in the then food production and distribution system and seriously damaged consumer confidence.

That’s how the idea was born for an agency that would be responsible for assessing all potential risks related to food safety in the EU. In 2002, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was founded, and today it is the leading agency responsible for food safety assessment in the EU.

The creation of EFSA was part of a broader European Commission plan to improve the EU’s food safety system. This plan also included adopting the so-called General Food Law, more precisely known in legal circles as Regulation (EC) 178/2002. The aim of these measures was to improve the food safety system, ensure a high level of consumer protection, and restore and maintain trust in the EU food system. The General Food Law establishes the general principles of risk analysis on which the food safety system is based, defines the roles of all actors in that system, and ultimately establishes EFSA as an independent agency responsible for risk assessment and providing scientific advice related to food safety. Protecting the health of people, animals, and plants at every stage of food production is both a public health and an economic priority.Ensuring that all EU member states follow the same food safety principles allows for free trade in food within the EU and simplifies trade globally.

What is EFSA’s role in the food safety system?

The basic principle of the EU food safety system is a clear functional and institutional separation of the two main components of risk analysis: risk assessment and risk management. This means that two separate and independent bodies are responsible for these functions.

One body (EFSA) assesses the risks related to food safety. Then, other independent bodies, the European Commission and European Parliament at the EU level, and competent authorities in each member state manage those risks based on EFSA’s scientific assessments and advice. They make decisions regarding nutritional recommendations, production methods, or even the promotion of certain food ingredients or products. Risk managers are therefore responsible for the correct implementation of the food safety system in the EU by taking preventive and control measures to reduce potential and actual risks. They also pass laws to prevent such risks in the future. This includes decisions about production, processing, packaging, transport, and consumption of products, as well as inspections, laboratory tests, fraud investigations, and penalizing offenders.

In many countries, these two functions are combined in a single body. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) not only assesses risks related to food (and medicines) but also decides how to handle them. This type of organization can be a source of potential conflicts of interest because the results and interpretation of analysis can be steered toward an outcome that benefits certain stakeholders (e.g., when deciding on the cultivation of a new GMO variety, the use of a pesticide, or an animal farming practice). The guiding idea behind the European approach is that separating risk assessment and risk management ensures impartiality and greater transparency of scientific advice.

If EFSA determines that the use of certain pesticides is harmful to bees, it is then up to the European Commission, European Parliament, and national authorities in each member state to decide whether to ban such pesticides. The same process applies when EFSA evaluates the safety of certain GMO varieties, the use of antibiotics in livestock farming, or the risk of spreading certain food-related diseases (e.g., salmonella).

Risk managers also take into account factors beyond food safety (economic, political, social). For example, EFSA’s review of scientific literature confirmed that sugar helps maintain alertness and stimulates brain activity (1). However, considering the other negative effects of excessive sugar consumption, authorities banned the use of such claims for advertising sweets or sugary drinks, reasoning that such messages could mislead consumers into thinking consumption is beneficial or recommended (2).

Despite its authoritative name, EFSA does not make or enforce laws, regulations, or any food safety decisions; it does not conduct safety checks, quality inspections, or labeling controls; it does not decide on product market approvals; and it does not penalize violators. Similarly, EFSA does not conduct scientific experiments or laboratory tests. In EFSA’s ten-story building in Parma, Italy, 500 employees identify and analyze food-related risks or dietary recommendations and issue advisory documents.

How does EFSA go from a question to an answer?

Of EFSA’s roughly 500 employees, most are scientists e.g. biologists, toxicologists, veterinarians, chemists, statisticians, nutritionists, etc. Their main tasks include collecting and organizing all relevant scientific publications and data related to a specific food safety issue and developing methodologies to provide the Scientific Panels and Scientific Committee with a foundation for their final decisions.

The Scientific Panels and Scientific Committee consist of highly qualified scientists and independent external experts specializing in various disciplines relevant to food safety. Their task is to analyze all relevant information and produce so-called scientific opinions.

Scientific opinions are EFSA’s scientific recommendations on specific risks in the food chain. These are documents, similar in form to scientific articles, that describe a specific food safety issue or dietary recommendation.

EFSA may receive a request for a so-called scientific advice from the European Commission, the European Parliament, EU member states, or it may initiate its own analysis if it deems a certain food safety area requires it. Once accepted, such a request becomes a mandate and is assigned to one of EFSA’s 10 Scientific Panels or the Scientific Committee, depending on the topic.

Each Scientific Panel focuses on a different area of the food chain (“from farm to fork”) – plant health and protection, GMOs, animal health and welfare, biological hazards (e.g., bacteria, viruses), chemical contaminants, pesticides, food additives, flavorings, food packaging, nutrition, etc.[TM1]  Questions to EFSA can cover a very wide range of food safety topics. For example: what are the recommended daily intake levels of vitamins and minerals for different population groups; is a new GMO variety safe; do animals in industrial farming feel stress, sadness, or pain; do particles from plastic packaging migrate into packaged food; and so on.

The Scientific Committee deals with so-called horizontal topics, such as developing guidelines and methodologies needed for scientific analysis across all panels.

After completing the analysis and considering all available relevant scientific data, EFSA’s panels or the Scientific Committee provide answers in the form of a scientific opinion. These EFSA opinions are publicly available and published in the EFSA Journal.

Communication and scientific cooperation

In addition to scientists specializing in food safety, EFSA also needs many other experts in supporting roles to ensure smooth operations. Alongside risk assessment and related activities, EFSA’s duty is also risk communication. This role involves independently and promptly communicating about potential risks, explaining the results of conducted analyses to all stakeholders (including risk managers, as well as the media and the public) through various communication channels, and in the clearest possible way for each of them. For example, EFSA communicated that 4 to 5 cups of coffee a day pose no health risk for healthy adults (except pregnant women) (3).

An example of somewhat more urgent communication is the discovery of the carcinogenicity of acrylamide (4), a compound formed when starchy foods are heat-treated at 120 °C. It is found in the burnt parts of chips, dough, or fried potatoes. Cases of a potential foodborne epidemic, on the other hand, are communicated almost instantly.

EFSA’s communication activities also include scientific cooperation with EU institutions, other EU agencies, international food safety organizations (e.g., FAO, WHO), NGOs, industry, consumers, and the media, all to ensure the exchange of information, knowledge, and experts, and organize joint activities to ensure the highest possible quality and internationally harmonized risk assessments. In this way, EFSA has grown from a locally conceived agency into a globally respected authority whose strong reputation is recognized worldwide — and from which even older and more experienced agencies can learn.

At the European level, you cannot influence food safety much. However, you can influence the quality of your own diet. Find out how good it is by completing the short questionnaire below.

References

1. Scientific Opinion on the substantiation of health claims related to glycaemic carbohydrates and maintenance of normal brain function pursuant to Article 13(5) of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006. EFSA Journal, 13, (2016).
2. Martínez, S. V., & Siani, A. Health claims made on food in the EU: The edge between scientific knowledge and regulatory requirements. Trends in Food Science and Technology, 69, 315–323 (2017).
3. Scientific Opinion on the safety of caffeine. EFSA Journal, 13, (2016).
4. Scientific Opinion on acrylamide in food. EFSA Journal, 13, 4104 (2015).