Ensuring food safety sits at the core of ILSI Europe’s scientific agenda. Our expert-driven initiatives address critical challenges in risk assessment and management. Through our collaborative research approach, we provide valuable insights to support harmonisation of scientific methodologies, food safety policies, and industry best practices.
Ongoing Food Safety Task Forces
The Task Force aims at fostering an international evidence-based consensus on how to assess the risk from allergenic foods. Once identified the agreed method, the Task Force envisage developing tools to help manage the risks and protect all consumers.
Food Allergen Analytics Task Force
The Food Allergen Analytics Task Force aims to harmonise food allergen analysis by identifying, consolidating, and developing best practices. Its goals are also to effectively communicate and educate interested stakeholders about these derived best practices.
Food contaminants present a serious risk to consumer health. Enhancing our understanding of them is essential. The Task Force focuses on:
- Advancing scientific knowledge on various contaminants, particularly assessing their impact on human health.
- Addressing research gaps in toxicity, exposure, and analytical aspects.
- Reviewing mitigation measures and supporting risk management strategies.
Microbiological Food Safety Task Force
The Task Force aims at facilitating the development of harmonised, science-based approaches to predict and prevent risks. Those approaches may serve as decision-making support for regulators and food industry. Reviewing the existing knowledge on current and (re-)emerging pathogen behaviour and ecology is also key.
The Task Force will also try to answer the reason why the pathogens persist by detecting and typing methods, as well as reviewing potential control options available.
The Microplastics Initiative’s ambition is to become a multidisciplinary reference community, fostering th exchange of state-of-the-art scientific knowledge and the latest advancements in the field of microand nanoplastics. Our expert panel is dedicated to consolidating the current state-of-the-art in dietary microplastics and nanoplastics analysis, offering valuable suggestions to advance methods toward a harmonised analytical methodology. Our goal is to address pressing health concerns related to the impact of dietary microplastics and nanoplastics on consumer health.
New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) Task Force
This unique transversal and multi-stakeholder Task Force aims to:
- Review the recently developed methods and build a consensus on how and what is needed to reduce animal testing in food and beverage development;
- Provide evidence-based science and evaluate potential strategies and approaches that ultimately could replace animal testing in food sciences;
- Communicate and disseminate the opportunities for alternatives in the food and drink sector.
Packaging Materials Task Force
For more than 30 years, the Task Force has strived to understand the challenges to ensure safe food contact materials for food consumption by:
- Evaluating food contact materials safety and their interactions with food to ensure consumers’ safety at minimal environmental impact.
- Addressing recent improvements in food production and distribution, leading to an increased sophistication of food packaging.
Food chains are evolving under the pressure of climate change and other global transformations. Decision-making in such a context cannot be based on excessive precautionary measures, currently hard-wired in risk assessment methods.
This Task Force will challenge established norms in risk analysis by uniting risk assessment and risk communication disciplines. Expert Groups will focus on designing effective risk assessment methods, and deepening the understanding of how food safety professionals perceive, understand and accept risk assessments.
Threshold of Toxicological Concern Task Force
Task Force objectives:
- Drive acceptance of the Threshold of Toxicological Concern (TTC) concept by increasing confidence in its scientific basis.
- Describe the sources of uncertainty within the TTC concept in comparison to animal-data based hazard characterization.
- Develop more specific approaches for assessment of data-poor mixtures with the TTC concept but also beyond.
- Foster discussion of differences in regulatory implementations of TTC across regions to increase understanding and reduce divergence.