Open call for food additive occurrence data in food and beverages intended for human consumption

Deadline for submission: 30/06/2024
Deadline for validation and acceptance of data: 31/08/2024

Background

Regulation (EC) No 1331/2008 establishes a common procedure for the assessment and authorisation of food additives, which shall be subject to a safety evaluation by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) before they are permitted for use in the European Union. 

Under Regulation (EU) No 257/2010 food additives already permitted for use in the European Union before 20 January 2009 must be kept under continuous observation and must be re-evaluated by EFSA. The Regulation also provides for food additives to be re-evaluated whenever necessary in the light of changing conditions of use and new scientific information.

This call for data is an open call and will be launched annually. However, it does not anticipate the yearly work programme of the Food Additives and Flavourings (FAF) Panel.

Submission of data

National food authorities, research institutions, academia, food business operators and other stakeholders are invited to submit occurrence (analytical) data on food additives. The full list of food additives that can be reported and their corresponding codes are published with this call in the excel file ‘Food_Additives_PARAM.xlsx’. The preparation of this excel was based on version 15.3 PARAM of Catalogue browser.

Priority list of food additives to support scientific opinions in progress:

How to submit data

Data must be submitted in electronic format (XML) to the EFSA Data Collection Framework (DCF) https://dcf.efsa.europa.eu/dcf-war/dc. User credentials are required to access the DCF web interface, please contact data.collection [at] efsa.europa.eu (data[dot]collection[at]efsa[dot]europa[dot]eu) to obtain the credentials.

EFSA will only accept data in SSD2 (Standard Sample Description version 2) format. In case data are compiled manually using the EFSA tools available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3714966, the XML file must be generated for direct submission to the DCF. A short video describing how to send data to EFSA is available here. 

The guidance ‘Chemical monitoring reporting guidance: 2024 data collection’ should also be consulted for reporting requirements and is available at https://doi.org/10.2903/sp.efsa.2024.EN-8596.

The annual major release of the catalogues (31/01/2024) and SSD2 structural metadata can be downloaded from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.779880.

Guidance on the installation and use of the EFSA Catalogue browser can be found at http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/supporting/pub/en-1726.

The DCF will open for the reporting of food additives occurrence data under the chemical monitoring data collection on 1 April 2024. The deadline for the complete transmission of all data through DCF is 30 June 2024. The last two months, period of 1 July – 31 August is set for the data validation and data acceptance in EFSA Scientific Data Warehouse (sDWH). 

The communication below is not applicable to Member State competent authorities.

All confidentiality requests within the frame of this call for data must be submitted separately via email to confidentialityrequestassessment [at] efsa.europa.eu. The ground or legal basis for the confidentiality request and the justification must be provided as well as the name of the field/(s) for which a confidentiality request is made. Failure to submit the requested information will prevent EFSA from assessing the confidentiality request. Consequently, all information submitted to EFSA will be made available to the public by EFSA in accordance with the provisions of Article 38(1).

Nonetheless, in case EFSA receives a new mandate for which data collected via this call will be used as a basis for EFSA’s outputs, data providers will be notified at least 3 months before the publication of the EFSA outputs about the new requirements to submit their confidentiality requests via the Portalino (available here). Information on how to submit confidentiality requests and how to use this tool is available online here, and here. Whenever a confidentiality request is submitted, a non-confidential version and a confidential version of information claimed confidential must be submitted together with each confidentiality request. You are also required to box or earmark information claimed confidential in the confidential version of the information you share with EFSA. Finally, please note that confidentiality requests must be submitted or EFSA is required to proactively publish all information, documents and data already submitted without delay, pursuant to Article 38(1)(c) / 38(1)(d) of the GFL and Article 6(1) of EFSA’s Practical Arrangements of transparency and confidentiality. 

Contact details

Please address any technical enquiries regarding the reporting of data to data.collection [at] efsa.europa.eu (data[dot]collection[at]efsa[dot]europa[dot]eu).