Procurement call to identify food safety priorities

09-Feb-2015 - Last updated on 09-Feb-2015 at 15:34 GMT

Results will help develop an EU risk assessment agenda

Identifying and gaining consensus on important scientific food safety areas between EFSA and EU Member States, Norway and Iceland is the aim of a procurement call.

The objective is to carry out a study, using the Delphi technique, said the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

The method sees a group of experts anonymously reply to questionnaires and receive feedback by statistical representation of the "group response," after which the process repeats itself.

The goal is to reduce the range of responses and arrive at something closer to expert consensus, according to the RAND Corporation who developed the technique in the 1950s.

Priorities are intended to focus on scientific areas of mutual interest where additional work or harmonisation is needed to inform and enhance risk assessment.

The study should focus on microbiological and chemical risk assessment, environmental issues that directly impact on human health through the food chain and nutrition.

Results will help to inform the development of an EU risk assessment agenda and the project is expected to take nine months.

Deadline to register an interest is 23 February and can be done by contacting: SCISTRAT.Procurement@efsa.europa.eu