Other Risks

The ACSA has published a document on the monitoring and control of food allergens, which includes activities in Catalonia in the period 2005-2010 about the management and control of food allergens. In a second part, ractions and results of monitoring programs and allergen control carried out by the competent authorities in Catalonia. And finally, this document includes training and information activities for the food industry and allergic and intolerant population.

Monitoring and Control of Food Allergens in Catalonia

Following a request from the European Commission, the Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies (NDA) derived dietary reference values for energy, which are provided as average requirements (ARs) of specified age and sex groups.

More info

Elika has developed this food allergy and intolerance infographic to explain what they are, which foodstuffs and ingredients cause them and which good practice should be carried out to eliminate the food or ingredient in the diet so as to avoid an allergy or intolerance.

Food Allergy and Intolerance Infographic

The inventory presented in this report describes the past and current scientific activities of EFSA addressing directly or indirectly bee risk assessment, risk mitigation and monitoring. To perform this work, the Emerging Risks Unit coordinated an internal Task Force including staff from the Pesticides, Animal Health and Welfare, Genetically Modified Organisms, Plant Health, Scientific Assistance Support and Emerging Risks Units and from the Communications Directorate.

Up to September 2012, a total of 355 scientific outputs (published/unpublished yet: 344/11), and a number of news stories and a video on bees, were identified from the Pesticides (311/7), Animal Health and Welfare (0/1), Genetically Modified Organisms (29/0) and the Plant Health (2/0) Units and Panels and from the Scientific Assistance Support (2/1) and the Emerging Risks (0/2) Units.

However, the majority of these outputs (89.6%) were conclusions on the peer review of pesticide active substances and opinions on applications for the approval of regulated genetically modified products. Among the 355 identified scientific outputs, 14 outputs (0.4%) focused on bees and were predominantly in the areas of pesticide risk assessment and monitoring. In addition, three external scientific activities between EFSA, Anses and OECD on bee issues were identified. The first EFSA scientific outputs on bee issues were published in 2004 and their number has increased progressively over time, but particularly after 2008 (23% published between 2004-2007 and 77% between 2008-2012). The Task Force will use this inventory to conduct a data gap analysis and make further recommendations in terms of research needs and future work at EFSA on bees in a second report.

Full report

The objective of the Pilot study for Assessment of Nutrient intake and food Consumption Among Kids in Europe (PANCAKE) project was to develop, test, and evaluate tools and procedures for a future harmonised pan-European food consumption survey (EU Menu) among infants, toddlers, children (up to ten years), and breastfeeding women.

Full report

During the Food Safety week, FSA has communicated new research showing that some people are taking more risks with food safety as they try to save money and make their meals go further.

The research showed that most of those questioned (97%) believed the cost of their typical shopping basket has gone up significantly in the last three years, with half of these (47%) trying to make better use of leftover food. However, a third of people were more likely to judge when food is safe to eat by its smell, look or how long it’s been stored, rather than by the 'use by' date, while others are keeping leftovers for longer than the recommended limit of two days in the fridge.

The FSA’s advice on leftovers and “use by” dates is:

• If you are going to store leftovers in the fridge, cool them as quickly as possible, ideally within 90 minutes. Cover them, get them in the fridge and then eat them within two days.
• Make sure your fridge is operating at the correct temperature – it should be below 5°C.
• You can also freeze your leftovers, but cool them first to minimize temperature fluctuation in your freezer. They can be safely stored in the freezer almost indefinitely, but the quality will deteriorate gradually with time, so it’s best to eat them within three months.
• Make sure you defrost frozen leftovers properly before using them. If you’re going to cook them straightaway use a microwave. If you don’t have a microwave, defrost them in the fridge overnight.
• Eat leftovers within 24 hours of defrosting and do not refreeze again. The only exception to this is if you are defrosting raw food, such as meat or poultry, which can be refrozen once it has been cooked.
• Cook leftovers until steaming hot throughout.
• Follow rigorously “Use by” in order to avoid food became unsafe with bugs like E.coli and salmonella, which don’t cause food to smell off, so food could look and smell fine but still be harmful.
• Follow "best before" date relates to food quality and nutritional aspects.

Food safety on a budget research

FSA advice on leaftovers and shopping attitudes

Article

This report presents the activities of the EFSA’s Emerging Risks Exchange Network together with a description of the Member States national activities on emerging risks detection. The Network met three times during 2011. The activities of the Network were focused on scientific and generic issues of importance for the exchange of relevant information for the detection of medium- and long-term emerging risks

2011 Report EREN

The Food Safety ranks as the third environmental priority for the twenty-first century, according to the United Nations Program for Environment.

In a recently published report, the need to addressed a number os challenges is remarked, otherwise it may have consequences such as increased hunger and malnutrition, depletion of marine ecosystems, increased threat of zoonotic diseases and by another type of food contamination.

The EFSA working group proposed a revised simplified framework for emerging risk identification including three main steps:

1. preliminary identification of priority emerging issues
2. identification of appropriate data sources and data collection
3. final evaluation and identification of emerging risks.

More info on Emerging Risk porposed methodology

Summary report of a joint symposium held in october 2010 in nice, france organised by the ILSI europe food allergy task force in association with Europrevall.

Food Allergy Risk Assessment

Report from the Commission on food and food ingredients treated with ionising radiation for the year 2008.

EC report on ioninised food

The European Food Safety Authority has developed a practical approach for assessing potential risks arising from applications of nanoscience and nanotechnologies in the food and feed chain. Guidance is provided on: the physico-chemical characterisation requirements of engineered nanomaterials used e.g. as food additives, enzymes, flavourings, food contact materials, novel foods, feed additives and pesticides and; testing approaches to identify and characterise hazards arising from the nanoproperties.

EFSA Opinion on Nanotechnology

EFSA statement on the Safety of Irradiation of Food EFSA has published a statement providing a summary of the conclusions and recommendations on the Safety of Irradiation of Food of two scientific opinions of the Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ) and the Food Contact Materials, Enzymes, Flavourings and Processing Aids (CEF) Panels adopted on September and November 2010, respectively.

Concerning the safety assessment of irradiation of food, there are no microbiological risks for the consumer linked to the use of food irradiation and its consequences on the food microflora.

EFSA statement on Food Irradiation

The aims of this FSA report were to identify: 1) The impact that climate change may have upon nutrition 2) The effects that climate change may have upon food safety 3) The impact that food & food waste has as a driver of climate change How responses to climate change may impact on nutrition and food safety.

Climate Change Report

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has completed the first ever review of the safety of 11 smoke flavourings used in the European Union. Based on EFSA’s work, the European Commission will establish a list of smoke flavouring products authorised for use in foods.

List of opinions on smoking flovours
Smoking flavours opinions

The International Life Sciences Institute ILSI reviewed the criteria for identifying allergenic foods of public health importance. This criteria include clinical issues (diagnosis, potency of allergen, severity of reactions), population elements (prevalence, exposure) and modulating factors (food processing). In the framework, data providing evidence for these criteria are weighted according to quality, using a ranking derived from evidence-based medicine.

Review