Collaborative repository to support food and feed safety risk assessment in Europe

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was established to assess risks associated with the food chain. EFSA’s risk assessment work contributes to improving food safety in Europe and to building public confidence in the way risk is assessed. Risk assessment is a specialised field of applied science that involves reviewing scientific data and studies in order to evaluate risks associated with certain hazards. In order to ensure the risk assessment process is robust and transparent EFSA is using systematic review principles for the identification, selection, appraisal and synthesis of scientific studies used as the basis for risk assessments.
Reports, working papers and risk assessments produced by government agencies, competent authorities and other public institutions in the member states are key pieces of evidence for European risk assessments. Frequently these documents are not published through traditional scientific publishing routes and may only be publically available for a brief period of time on organisation websites. These reports generally come from routine control, prevention and monitoring programmes, which can be used to define baselines and provide a deeper understanding of the variability of risk factors between the regions and countries of Europe.
EFSA is developing a repository of food and feed safety related documents. Each document will have metadata compliant with Dublin core/Open Archives Initiative standards and Digital Object Identifier assigned to allow long term retrieval. The repository will feature social networking functions to facilitate sharing of information between risk assessors and scientists, promoting collaborative working. The reuse and recycling of scientific reports by the European risk assessment community should result in targeted and cost effective measures to ensure the security of the Europe’s food chain.