Stakeholder workshop on ‘Food and Feed Safety Vulnerabilities in Circular Economy’

13:00-17:00 CET

Background

EFSA is running a two-year project to identify food and feed safety vulnerabilities in circular economy. More specifically, the project aims to:

• Gather and evaluate the evidence for vulnerabilities of a circular economy for food/feed safety, plant, animal and the environment.
• Explore possible synergies, opportunities and challenges for integrated approaches for environmental and food safety risk assessment.
• Build a network of stakeholders to support and contribute to these aims..

Through a participatory foresight process, the project will identify potential emerging risks for food and feed safety and the environment in the transition to a circular economy in a holistic and integrated fashion. This will ensure that food and feed safety as well as environmental health considerations are incorporated, where relevant, at an early stage of research or policy initiatives linked to the circular economy.

The involvement of partners and stakeholders is key to identify challenges for future risk assessments and explore possible synergies, opportunities, detect potential conflicts and explore ways of addressing them in the context of environmental and food safety risk assessment activities. To this end, EFSA is building a network of partners and stakeholders that will be regularly engaged throughout the project.

Objectives of the meeting

This workshop was the first step in a foresight participatory process where EFSA will engage with partners and stakeholders on food and feed safety vulnerabilities in circular economy and related risk assessment needs. At the workshop, participants:

• Received more information on the scope and objective of EFSA’s project.
• Discussed its research framework and initial research conducted on risks related to novel food and feed.
• Brainstormed on new emerging risks, and how to characterize those.
• Discussed the project’s future stakeholder engagement activities.

The meeting was attended by partners and stakeholders who expressed their willingness to contribute to the project through our open call for expression of interest. To ensure a balanced representation of all stakeholder groups and a fruitful discussion, participation to the workshop was limited. Participants were selected by EFSA based on the relevance of their interest and expertise in the topic under discussion (novel sources of food and feed).

Next steps

Stakeholders who have expressed their interest in the project will be invited to a targeted consultation (closing date: 30 November 2021) whose objective is to collect views on the outcome of the extensive literature review conducted by Harper Adams University on behalf of EFSA to identify emerging risks for food and feed safety, plant, animal health and the environment from novel foods and feeds of relevance to the circular economy framework. Stakeholders are invited to provide their comments and available information on:

• the identified emerging risks
• data for their characterisation
• the methodology used

Stakeholders may also highlight any available data to inform the characterisation of the identified emerging risks. 

Contact

Do not hesitate to contact engage [at] efsa.europa.eu (engage[at]efsa[dot]europa[dot]eu) for more information.