European food safety bodies to share expertise

The three member states have opted to reinforce their internal food safety set ups with a new, outward-facing cooperation to pool expert knowledge on risk assessment, communication, and research – as well as science-based risk communication.

The cooperation is between Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), the French agency Anses, and the Food Institute of the Danish Tekniske Universitet.

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“We want to establish a strong network of risk assessment specialists in our institutions to ensure a rapid exchange of scientific findings in Europe,”​ said Prof. Dr Dr Andreas Hensel, president of the BfR, “in particular in the event of a food crisis we have to rely on the competency and excellence of our colleagues”.​

The nature of the modern food industry means that unsafe or contaminated foodstuffs can spread rapidly through the European food chain, meaning that cooperation between member states needs to be swift and coordinated.

The move is said to make sense since the three bodies have similar tasks and use comparable concepts based on active research for scientific risk assessment.

The initial plan for projects the group will cooperate on will be determined at the first annual meeting in 2011. Each institute is establishing a working group of three members.

European food safety​

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the Commission’s risk assessor, has also indicated a desire to strengthen food safety communication between member states. In its work plan for 2011 it said it has shared and begun to work with national food safety agencies on its medium-term planning “so that they can plan any future involvement in the Authority’s work programme more easily”.​

A Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed also operates at the European level, ensuring swift communication across the block. Set up over 30 years ago, in 2009 almost 8000 notifications were sent out using the system, a 12 per cent increase on the previous year.

The European Commission said this increase was due to more follow-up notifications and less urgent matters, but some 557 notifications were about serious risks on products on the market.

10 years in Belgium​

This month the Belgian AFSCA has been celebrating 10 years of existence. Set up in the wake of the 1999 dioxin crisis, the agency says a recent survey indicated that 83 per cent of consumers believe food safety has evolved well or very well over the last decade.

The agency now carries out around 100,000 controls a year and takes some 60,000 samples for testing.