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 7th 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
A to Z
3-MCPD Esters in Food Products Summary Report
2009
Summary report of an ILSI Europe workshop held in February 2009.
A Framework to Determine the Effectiveness of Dietary Exposure Mitigation to Chemical Contaminants
2014
Food and Chemical Toxicology. 2014;74:360-371. Commissioned by the Process-related Compounds and Natural Toxins Task Force.
Analytical Approaches for MCPD Esters and Glycidyl Esters in Food and Biological Samples – A Review and Future Perspectives
2013
Food Additives and Contaminants: Part A. 2013;30(1):11-45. Commissioned by the Risk Assessment of Chemicals in Food Task Force.
Evaluation of Agronomic Practices for Mitigation of Natural Toxins
2010
ILSI Europe Report Series. 2010:1-48.
Exposure Assessment of Process-Related Contaminants in Food by Biomarker Monitoring
2018
Archives of Toxicology 2018;92:15–40. Commissioned by the Process-Related Compounds and natural Toxins Task Force.