Food Safety Regulatory Research Needs 2030

Abstract

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) regularly collects recommendations from members of the Scientific Committee and Scientific Panels on EFSA's research needs and priorities (EFSA, 2017). At the end of the 2015-2018 Scientific Panels mandate, we collected views of outgoing Panel members on what food safety research areas should be prioritised for the coming 5-10 years. The objective was, not only to capitalise on experience gained during the Panel mandate, but also to inform research agendas, such as the upcoming Horizon Europe-Research Programme. The identification of risk assessment research priorities and the communication of such priorities to the relevant actors is an important aspect of the 'EFSA Strategy 2020: Trusted science for safe food'. 1 In addition to the Panel members, EFSA staff and other EFSA partner organisations and stakeholders were consulted, including the following: • By July 2018, 43 research needs were received from Scientific Committee/Scientific Panel members, as well as from EFSA's own scientific staff, describing briefly the scope and desired impact of the research. • These research needs were collated and shared with EFSA's Advisory Forum for comments by September 2018. • During EFSA's Scientific Conference (18-21 September 2018), 2 EFSA consulted the wider scientific community participating in the conference and received 30 additional contributions.