Concluding Remarks and Future Considerations
By analyzing the legal basis of the work conducted by the EFSA, this chapter aims to build on existing literature that reviews the tasks, activities, and even legitimacy of EFSA[157] and reflect on essential issues that seemingly result from these practices.
First, the analysis presented in this chapter clarifies that the legal basis for conducting assessments related to risks and beneficial effects of food (ingredients) is clearly put forward in the GFL. Still, the reasons to consistently use the term “risk assessment” in legislation versus “scientific assessment” in EFSA’s corporate documents still need to be unraveled. Interestingly, a large amount of the work conducted by EFSA is shown to be related to the assessment of health claims, which is only one of the areas of regulated products within which EFSA is functioning as risk assessor. And, more importantly, “risk assessment” may be a debatable term when the main purpose of assessment is actually an efficacy assessment. This is not merely the case for the work that EFSA’s NDA Panel is conducting for health claims but is, for example, also seen in assessing the efficacy of feed additives under Regulation 1831/2003.[158]This analysis also highlights the need to further review the term “assessment” for the issued opinions under specific sectoral food legislation: it refers to “risk assessment,” “benefit/efficacy assessment,” and even to “risk-benefit assessment,” especially since the procedure itself is focused only on reviewing submitted scientific evidence rather than presenting a systematic approach to gather scientific evidence. This chapter has identified various questions and considerations that need to be addressed before a shared approach may be developed for the different types of assessments. This includes, among others, questions as to what type of data is required for a complete assessment. Further research into already conducted scientific assessments, as published by EFSA, can be seen as an important next step to advance this debate. Whereas this chapter has further unraveled the legal basis of EFSA’s work and activities as laid down in European food law, future research is necessary to advance the debate regarding both the terminology used for the different types of assessment and to foster optimizing the processes to conduct these assessments.
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