The Foodsafetyportal. Online expert support for enforcement and risk assessment

It is an obligation in the EU that a Member State’s RASFF Contact Point notifies to the European Commission and the other Member States on a hazard of, among others, a chemical compound in food, within 48 hours. To conclude about the risk, an exposure assessment is needed. Following the concept of Risk Analysis of the Codex Alimentarius, the Contact Point is officially a risk manager. Being not a risk assessor, support might be needed. The foodsafetyportal (https://foodsafetyportal.eu) provides such support; a risk manager can now perform a rapid exposure assessment using calculators and data-sets presented in the portal. Furthermore, a risk assessor can find additional information in the portal, such as details about reference values and EFSA’s approach of the Margin of Exposure. All tools in the portal are online; separate downloads or registration is not needed. The portal is also used in training programs; it is included in BTSF training sessions on the program On Risk Assessment (Course 1, Chemical risk assessment in food). To develop this portal and its tools it was needed to download various data-sets from EFSA and other providers. And, to create computer codes for the calculation tools. New concepts were developed for the selection of the most appropriate HBGV to evaluate consumers’ intake, and for the implementation of EFSA’s Margin of Exposure. Based on the experiences of acquiring the data-sets it is concluded that scientifically-based food safety needs better harmonization of data sources’ formats and relation schemes. And agreements on how to arrange updates. Besides EFSA is kindly requested to provide a public download of the FOODEX 2 codes, and to make existing data of consumption of individual consumers in the member states’ surveys available for download.