EU food agency needs to restore ‘credibility’. The Cancer Prevention and Education Society (CPES), has raised fresh questions about the agency. It has questioned whether EFSA “really is ready for the challenges of tomorrow” and has joined others in calling for reform of EFSA’s founding regulations.
EU policymaking: Rooted in science? European policymakers face a difficult choice when authorising new technologies such as GMOs, as they often find themselves caught between conflicting expert safety advice and calls to respect the precautionary principle when scientific evidence is insufficient.
EFSA’s anniversary hit by protest over ‘industry capture’ of food safety. EFSA’s showpiece tenth anniversary event was overshadowed by a protest outside the conference venue by farmers, NGOs, students and local activists, accusing EFSA of “reliance” on industry studies and data to form its scientific advice to the EU institutions.
EU approval of Roundup ‘based on bad science’ says study. German government authorities tasked with reporting on the industry studies to the EU Commission and member states played down the findings, giving a false impression of glyphosate’s safety, according to a new review.
Teratogenic Effects of Glyphosate-Based Herbicides: Divergence of Regulatory Decisions from Scientific Evidence. Examination of the German authorities’ draft assessment report on the safety of glyphosate reveals evidence of glyphosate’s teratogenicity, with malformations associated with retinoic acid teratogenesis. The authors argue that in approving glyphosate the German and EU authorities minimized these findings and consequently set a potentially unsafe acceptable daily intake (ADI) level for glyphosate.
Advancing the next generation of health risk assessment. Over the past 20 years, knowledge of the genome and its function has increased dramatically, but risk assessment methodologies using such knowledge have not advanced accordingly. Here, prototype risk assessments that compare the results of traditional RA with new insights from molecular and systems biology data are described, to outline the advances expected over the next 10-20 years.
Wind of Change Challenges Toxicological Regulators. There are high hopes that in vitro systems might replace the need for animal testing in regulatory toxicology. This paper suggests an in vitro-only approach for regulatory testing “that will benefit consumers, industry, and regulators alike” – or so it says.
Emerging and Novel BFRs in Food: EFSA CONTAM Committee Opinion. There is very little published data on emerging and novel BFRs, hampering their identification in environmental samples and preventing environmental risk assessment. Nonetheless, at least two compounds show indications of likely genotoxicity and carcinogenicity.