ILSI / Process-Related Compounds and Natural Toxins

Improving scientific knowledge on food contaminants to ensure safer products

Background & Objectives

Food can be contaminated by unintentionally added process contaminants or by natural toxins (e.g. mycotoxins), which may be a risk to consumers’ health. It is therefore crucial to study them to improve the way to detect and quantify them and to develop tools for risk assesment, mitigation and prioritisation processes.

Impact

The Task Force’s Practical Guidance to Mitigation of Mycotoxins during Food Processing offers proven, easy to implement, and practical methods to mitigate mycotoxins per commodity. This document is useful to food operators and other stakeholders; as well as for official control agencies interested in improving their understanding of the global mycotoxin mitigation.
At the 2019 World Mycotoxin Forum the Guidance was recognised as a provider of “integrated solutions crucial for the efficient control and reduction of mycotoxins along food and feed chains”. Moreover, a 2013 Task Force’s publication (Berthiller et al, 2013) is quoted in the EFSA Risk assessment of ochratoxin A in food (EFSA scientific opinion, 2020). And in 2016, the Task Force’s publication (Karlovsky et al, 2016) assessing the impact of processing and detoxification treatments on mycotoxins has been accessed more than 21,000 times and cited 235 times, highlighting the quality of the Task Force work on mycotoxins.

For more detailed information, please contact Dr Simeon Bourdoux at sbourdoux@ilsieurope.be or Belinda Antonio at bantonio@ilsieurope.be

Task Force Members


Dr Michele Suman – Chair	Barilla G&R Fratelli	Head of Food Safety & Authenticity	IT
Dr Neil Buck – Vice-Chair	General Mills	Corporate Toxicologist	CH
Dr Michelangelo Pascale – Co-Chair	Institute of Food Sciences, National Research Council of Italy (ISA-CNR)	Director	IT
Dr Clare Hazel	Premier Foods	Group Science Manager	UK
Dr Nils Hinrichsen	ADM	R&D Manager	DE
Dr Karsten Harms	Südzucker Group	Senior Manager Molecular Biology	DE
Ms Sue O’Hagan	PepsiCo International	Director Scientific Affairs	UK
Dr Gloria Pellegrino	Luigi Lavazza	Scientific Research Manager	IT
Dr Daniel Ribera	Cargill	Senior Advisor Regulatory and Scientific Affairs	BE
Dr Gerrit Speijers*	General Health Effects Toxicology Safety Food (GETS)	Retired – Expert in Food Safety	NL
Dr Natalie Thatcher	Mondelēz International	Global Lead for Toxicology	DE
Prof. Armando Venâncio*	University of Minho	Associate Professor	PT
Dr Simeon Bourdoux	ILSI Europe	Scientific Project Manager	BE

* Scientific Advisor

Expert Groups

Mineral Oil Risk Assessment: Knowledge Gaps and Roadmap
In collaboration with the Packaging Materials Task Force

Background & Objectives
This activity is the continuation of the multi-stakeholder workshop held in February 2019.
The array of knowledge gaps on mineral oils in food, including the challenges posed by analytical methodologies and the numerous potential routes of exposure, were the starting point of the workshop. As such, the workshop objectives were to:

Identify the fundamental knowledge gaps to understand the potential risks of mineral oils in food.
Build a multi-stakeholder consensus on the scientific understanding of exposure assessment, hazard characterisation, risk assessment and analytical methods for mineral oils in food.

Output
This activity will result in a recommendation document that will determine potential best practices to align methods available for untargeted screening and future testing.
To develop it, the draft will be discussed at an international workshop organised back-to-back with the 7^th International
Packaging Symposium.

Process-Related Contaminants as an Example for Holistic Dosimetry of Endogenous and Exogenous Exposures

Background & Objectives
The assessment of exposure is a key part of human health risk assessment. Such assessment requires understanding the totality of environmental exposures (also called exposome). To characterize this exposome is to understand the relative weight of both its internal and external components. Indeed, exposure to an agent may be caused by an external occurrence of the agent (e.g. on food) or the agent may be generated within the organism as a consequence of the metabolism.
This activity is a pioneering initiative to expand knowledge on the endogenous exposome (or the internal component) and to explore its use as a reference for a more holistic human health risk assessment of total exposure. To that end, process-related contaminants will be used as a working model to determine the respective weight of endogenous versus exogenous exposure.

Output
The aim of the activity is to understand the contribution of endogenous versus exogenous sources of process-related contaminants to total exposure in order to arrive at a more comprehensive risk assessment. A major objective is to identify research gaps which could prevent the use of this approach in risk assessment and potential leads to fill those gaps. The work the expert group will be summarised in a peer-reviewed publication and disseminated at international conferences.

Expert Group Members

Mineral Oil Risk Assessment: Knowledge Gaps and Roadmap


Ms Susan O’Hagan – Chair	PepsiCo International	Director Scientific Affairs	UK
Prof. Giorgia Purcaro – Co-Chair	University of Liege	Professor	BE
Dr Thomas Gude	Swiss Quality Testing Services - SQTS	Department Head	CH
Ms Andrea Hochegger	Technical University Graz	Phd Student	AT
Prof. Erich Leitner	Technical University Graz	Professor	AT
Dr Birgit Mertens	Sciensano	Toxicologist	BE
Prof. Sabrina Moret	University of Udine	Associate Professor	IT
Prof. Fatima Poças	Portuguese Catholic University	Professor	BE
Prof. Thomas Simat	Technical University of Dresden	Professor	DE
Dr Siméon Bourdoux	ILSI Europe	Scientific Project Manager	BE

Process-Related Contaminants as an Example for Holistic Dosimetry of Endogenous and Exogenous Exposure


Prof. Ivonne Rietjens – Chair	University of Wageningen	Professor	NL
Prof. Angela Mally – Co-Chair	University of Wuerzburg	Professor	DE
Prof. Michael Arand	University of Zurich	Group Leader	CH
Prof. Hermann Bolt	Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors	Professor Emeritus	DE
Prof. Gerhard Eisenbrand	TU Kaiserslautern	Toxicologist	DE
Prof. Andrea Hartwig	Karlsruhe Institute of Technology	Professor	DE
Dr Nils Hinrichsen	ADM	R&D Manager	DE
Dr Christine Kalisch	University of Wuerzburg	PhD Student	DE
Dr Gloria Pellegrino	Luigi Lavazza	Scientific Research Manager	IT
Dr Daniel Ribera	Cargill	Senior Advisor Regulatory and Scientific Affairs	BE
Dr Natalie Thatcher	Mondelēz International	Global Lead for Toxicology	UK
Dr Siméon Bourdoux	ILSI Europe	Scientific Project Manager	BE

Publications

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All Publications

The Role of Hazard- and Risk-Based Approaches in Ensuring Food Safety

2015

ILSI Europe

Trends in Food Science & Technology. 2015;46(2) Part A:176-188. Supported by the following task forces: Emerging Microbiological Issues, Food Allergy, Food Intake Methodology, Novel Foods and Nanotechnology, Process Related Compounds and Natural Toxins, Risk Analysis in Food Microbiology, and Threshold of Toxicological Concern.

Europe