The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is an EU agency funded by the European Union, with the main purpose to provide independent scientific advice to the European Commission, the European Parliament and EU Member States, and communicate about the risks related to the food chain.

Last year, EFSA celebrated 20 years of working to ensure the safety of food across Europe. A milestone anniversary which coincided with new rules aiming to transform the way EFSA carries out its role as risk assessor in the EU food safety system. The new rules, coming under the aptly named ‘Transparency Regulation’ (TR), strengthened the reliability and independence of the scientific studies submitted to EFSA, brought civil society closer to EFSA’s work and allowed EFSA to benefit from greater scrutiny of its working practices through increased openness. Alongside these changes came an increased budget and responsibility for EFSA to help build trust in the EU food safety ecosystem, amidst calls for more cooperation to make the EU risk assessment system sustainable. These changes are challenging and EFSA believes that by working alongside existing and future partners, a high level of preparedness must be achieved to deal with them.

An ever-changing environment brings challenges and opportunities

To put it simply, risk managers require timely, state-of-the-art scientific advice on which to base their decisions. Therefore, our job as risk assessors is to provide fit-for-purpose food safety assessments on time. While EFSA continues to deliver quality outputs, we face challenges on timeliness for parts of our scientific work. The changing environment in which we work strains our ability to deliver, but also offers opportunities which can strengthen the EU risk assessment capacity.

Exponential growth in data and evidence, increasingly sophisticated assessment methodologies and new toxicological criteria, like developmental and degenerative neurotoxicity, pose additional scientific complexity. While complexity generally implies a reduction in speed, some of these advancements can also speed things up as well as enable us to be more prepared to answer to future challenges. One only needs to think of data innovations such as artificial intelligence which work to tackle issues of speed and quality while keeping pace with the growth of evidence.

Increasing societal demands for more protection of human health and the planet have led to various policy and regulatory changes. European policies such as the EU’s Green Deal (which intends to improve the well-being and health of citizens and future generations) and the Farm to Fork Strategy (which aims for a transition to more sustainable and resilient food systems-where food safety is an integral part) underline the need for a comprehensive view on the health, environment and socio-economic impacts of interventions in the agri-food system. It is obvious that the answer to such complex questions calls for an ecosystem approach where interdisciplinary collaboration is crucial. At EFSA we think that the “One Health” paradigm of solving problems in a systemic, multidisciplinary and collaborative way provides a useful framework for integrating food safety, food security and sustainable food systems. Though collaboration does add organisational complexity during the set-up phase, in the long run it ensures a more efficient use of resources and it delivers more relevant advice to risk managers.

Partnerships are the solution

This is why partnerships are a key objective of EFSA's 2027 Strategy.Footnote 1 We aim at strengthening and building long-term cooperation based on mutual trust and shared goals and values with food safety actors across the EU and beyond. This will require aligning strategies and priorities, investing together, taking risks and sharing successes. To get there, we need political commitment, we have to create trust and it will take time. In a way this is mirroring the project of EU integration on a small scale: being united in diversity.

Continuous engagement with food safety ecosystem actors will bring us closer together and strengthen the EU risk assessment capacity to tackle complex regulatory science questions. It will allow for further integration of organisations, expertise, methods and data between the EU Member States and partners to the benefit of the European project.

EFSA is committed to playing its part in moving forward the partnership approach. However, success requires the willingness and action of our partners alongside political support from the EU institutions and Member State governments.

Partnerships in action

EFSA is already proactive in looking to promote partnership work amongst EU food safety ecosystem actors. One example at Member State level is our collaboration with the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) to increase food safety data openness and interoperability, providing data collected by the German Federal States available for risk assessment at European level.

EFSA’s EU Bee PartnershipFootnote 2 is another example of how stakeholders with a common interest can make progress when they are aligned on a common objective. The partnership focuses on the collection and sharing of bee health data across the EU. After four years of joint efforts, a harmonised bee health data platform prototype was delivered in July 2021 and aims to be fully operational in 2023.

A willingness to do more exists

All the actors within the EU food safety system can be proud of what has been achieved over the last 20 years. Our joint capacity to assess and manage risks, to handle crises, to be prepared for emerging threats and to transparently communicate with the EU citizens has significantly increased. Nevertheless, there is much to be done when it comes to enhancing cooperation and integration. The EU food safety ecosystem is rich in competent actors who can bring knowledge, data, and expertise together for mutual benefit. But to make partnerships happen, we may need to follow an advice that was already given by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do”.

EFSA is doing everything it can to initiate, build and broaden multiple partnerships. We want to make the EU food safety system even more successful and fit for the next 20 years.