scholarly journals Ecological Recovery and Resilience in Environmental Risk Assessments at the European Food Safety Authority

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 586-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theo Brock ◽  
Franz Bigler ◽  
Geoff Frampton ◽  
Christer Hogstrand ◽  
Robert Luttik ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Safety ◽  
Environmental Risk ◽  
European Food Safety Authority ◽  
Risk Assessments ◽  
Ecological Recovery

Challenges and prospects of the European Food Safety Authority biological hazards risk assessments for food safety

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 50-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Latronico ◽  
Sandra Correia ◽  
Teresa da Silva Felicio ◽  
Michaela Hempen ◽  
Winy Messens ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Safety ◽  
European Food Safety Authority ◽  
Risk Assessments

Overview of the activities of the European Food Safety Authority on mycotoxins in food and feed

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Eskola ◽  
A. Altieri ◽  
J. Galobart
Keyword(s):  
Food Safety ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
Dietary Exposure ◽  
Feed Additives ◽  
European Food Safety Authority ◽  
Risk Assessments ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Adverse Health Effects ◽  
Research Organisations

Mycotoxins are widely occurring in foods and feeds and dietary exposure to them can induce various types of adverse health effects in humans and animals. Since its establishment in 2002, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has assessed risks of dietary exposure to mycotoxins for public health and for the health of farm and companion animals on the request of the European Commission and has assessed safety and efficacy of feed additives for the reduction of contamination of feed by mycotoxins within the European Union authorisation process for feed additives. Over 40 scientific opinions on risks of mycotoxins for human and animal health and other reports on mycotoxins have been issued by the authority for the use of the European risk managers. Mycotoxins belong to one of the important areas of the EFSA work. Occurrence data on mycotoxins submitted to EFSA by the European national food safety bodies and research institutions have been collected in the EFSA databases and have informed its scientific opinions and reports on mycotoxins. Similarly, many EFSA-funded projects conducted by the European research organisations, not only to generate data on occurrence, but also data on toxicity of mycotoxins, have provided valuable information for the risk assessments of EFSA. Aflatoxin and deoxynivalenol are the mycotoxins, for which EFSA has delivered most of its scientific mycotoxin opinions. Very recently also modified forms of mycotoxins have been included in the EFSA risk assessments. In this review paper an overview of many different EFSA activities on mycotoxins is given. It also includes a brief description how EFSA develops its scientific opinions and works.

scholarly journals Caffeine Health Claims on Sports Supplement Labeling. Analytical Assessment According to EFSA Scientific Opinion and International Evidence and Criteria

Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (7) ◽  
pp. 2095
Author(s):  
Pedro Estevan Navarro ◽  
Isabel Sospedra ◽  
Alejandro Perales ◽  
Cristina González-Díaz ◽  
Rubén Jiménez-Alfageme ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Safety ◽  
Endurance Performance ◽  
Food Supplement ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
European Food Safety Authority ◽  
Health Claims ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Strength Performance ◽  
Scientific Opinion ◽  
Term Performance

Caffeine is a food supplement widely consumed by athletes, but it has not been established. So far, the veracity of their labeling in terms of the dosage and cause/effect relationship aimed at the consumer. The aim is to analyze the health claims and the dosage presented on the labeling of caffeine supplements and to evaluate if they follow the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and international criteria. A descriptive cross-sectional study of a sample of caffeine supplements was carried out. The search was done through the Amazon and Google Shopping web portals. In order to assess the adequacy of the health claims, the guidelines of reference established by European Food Safety Authority were compared to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, International Olympic Committee, and Australian Institute of Sport guidelines; in addition, recent systematic reviews were addressed. A review of labels of 42 caffeine supplements showed that, in less than 3% of the products were the health claims supported by the recommendations and by the labeled quantity of caffeine. The claims that fully complied the recommendations were, “improves or increases endurance performance”, “improves strength performance”, or “improves short-term performance”. In most cases, the recommended dosage was 200 mg/day for these products, which is the minimum for the caffeine effects to be declared. The rest of the health claims were not adequate or need to be modified. Most of the health claims identified indicated an unproven cause and effect, which constitutes consumer fraud, and so must be modified or eliminated.

scholarly journals Enlisting Supervised Machine Learning in Mapping Scientific Uncertainty Expressed in Food Risk Analysis

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 608-641 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akos Rona-Tas ◽  
Antoine Cornuéjols ◽  
Sandrine Blanchemanche ◽  
Antonin Duroy ◽  
Christine Martin
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Food Safety ◽  
Supervised Machine Learning ◽  
Risk Assessments ◽  
Scientific Uncertainty ◽  
Empirical Measure ◽  
Taxonomic Structure ◽  
Safety Risk ◽  
Food Safety Risk

Recently, both sociology of science and policy research have shown increased interest in scientific uncertainty. To contribute to these debates and create an empirical measure of scientific uncertainty, we inductively devised two systems of classification or ontologies to describe scientific uncertainty in a large corpus of food safety risk assessments with the help of machine learning (ML). We ask three questions: (1) Can we use ML to assist with coding complex documents such as food safety risk assessments on a difficult topic like scientific uncertainty? (2) Can we assess using ML the quality of the ontologies we devised? (3) And, finally, does the quality of our ontologies depend on social factors? We found that ML can do surprisingly well in its simplest form identifying complex meanings, and it does not benefit from adding certain types of complexity to the analysis. Our ML experiments show that in one ontology which is a simple typology, against expectations, semantic opposites attract each other and support the taxonomic structure of the other. And finally, we found some evidence that institutional factors do influence how well our taxonomy of uncertainty performs, but its ability to capture meaning does not vary greatly across the time, institutional context, and cultures we investigated.

scholarly journals What counts as expertise? The case of glyphosate and Jasanoff’s ‘three-body problem’

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 168-182
Author(s):  
Caer Smyth
Keyword(s):  
Food Safety ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
World Health Organisation ◽  
European Food Safety Authority ◽  
World Health ◽  
International Agency ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Three Body Problem ◽  
Expert Advisory ◽  
Three Body

In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organisation published a monograph stating that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, Monsanto’s leading herbicide, was ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’. Shortly after this, the European Food Safety Authority re-assessed glyphosate’s licence for use in the European Union, and deemed it to be safe for human use. Both of these expert advisory bodies faced condemnation and accusations of political bias as a result of these assessments. Employing Jasanoff’s ‘three-body problem’, this article examines the conflicting conclusions of the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the European Food Safety Authority, exploring what the contested assessments of glyphosate reveal about the entangled relationship between scientific expertise and law-making.

scholarly journals Risk Assessment of "Other Substances" – L-threonine

2020 ◽  
pp. 63-65
Author(s):  
Martinus Løvik ◽  
Livar Frøyland ◽  
Margaretha Haugen ◽  
Sigrun Henjum ◽  
Kristin Holvik ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Food Safety ◽  
Adverse Effects ◽  
Health Effects ◽  
Food Supplements ◽  
Risk Assessments ◽  
Adverse Health Effects ◽  
Adverse Health ◽  
Other Substances ◽  
One Year

The Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food Safety (Vitenskapskomiteen for mattrygghet, VKM) has, at the request of the Norwegian Food Safety Authority (Mattilsynet; NFSA), assessed the risk of "other substances" in food supplements and energy drinks sold in Norway. VKM has assessed the risk of doses given by NFSA. These risk assessments will provide NFSA with the scientific basis while regulating "other substances" in food supplements. "Other substances" are described in the food supplement directive 2002/46/EC as substances other than vitamins or minerals that have a nutritional and/ or physiological e ffect. It is added mainly to food supplements, but also to energy drinks and other foods. In this series of risk assessments of "other substances" the VKM has not evaluated any claimed beneficial effects from these substances, only possible adverse effects. The present report is a risk assessment of specified doses of L-threonine in food supplements, and it is based on previous risk assessments and articles retrieved from literature searches. According to information from NFSA, L-threonine is an ingredient in food supplements sold in Norway. NSFA has requested a risk assessment of 1000, 1200, 1500, 2000 and 2400 mg/day of L-threonine from food supplements.  L-threonine is an essential amino acid not known to cause any adverse health effects. Previous reports do not indicate a tolerable upper intake level, apart from an approval of a dose of 1150 mg/day by the Scientific Committee of the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN). Long-term studies in humans were not found. The only available human studies were: a small uncontrolled one-year pilot study with doses ranging from 0.5 to 2.5 g/day, one eight-week randomised controlled trial (RCT) using a dose of 7.5 g/day, and two 2-week RCTs using doses of 6 and 4.5 g/day. No adverse effects (diary method of registration of adverse effects) were reported in the eight-week clinical trial, and the only adverse effects observed in the two-week trials were one case of indigestion and one case of diarrhoea. A four-week rodent toxicity study indicated a no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) of 854.3 mg/kg bw per day (only dose tested, no adverse effects observed).  The value used for comparison with the estimated exposure in the risk characterisation is the NOAEL defined in an 8-week randomised placebo controlled study in humans, 7500 mg/day. For a 70-kg individual, this corresponds to 107 mg/kg bw per day. Two human two-week studies and a small one-year pilot study support the notion that this dose will be well tolerated. The overall mean threonine intake according to NHANES III (3 g/day) is slightly larger than the doses requested for evaluation in the present risk assessment. No studies in children (10 to <14 years) and adolescents (14 to <18 years) were identified. Based on the included literature there was no evidence indicating that age affects the tolerance for relevant doses of threonine. Therefore, in this risk characterisation a tolerance as for adults, based on body weight, was assumed for these age groups. VKM concludes that: In adults (≥18 years), the specified doses 1000, 1200, 1500, 2000 and 2400 mg/day L-threonine in food supplements are unlikely to cause adverse health effects. In adolescents (14 to <18 years), the specified doses 1000, 1200, 1500, 2000 and 2400 mg/day L-threonine in food supplements are unlikely to cause adverse health effects. In children (10 to <14 years), the specified doses 1000, 1200, 1500, 2000 and 2400 mg/day L-threonine in food supplements are unlikely to cause adverse health effects. Children younger than 10 years were not within the scope of the present risk assessment.

scholarly journals Differences in the carcinogenic evaluation of glyphosate between the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)

2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (8) ◽  
pp. 741-745 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J Portier ◽  
Bruce K Armstrong ◽  
Bruce C Baguley ◽  
Xaver Baur ◽  
Igor Belyaev ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Safety ◽  
European Food Safety Authority ◽  
International Agency
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