Risk Benefit Assessment in Food Safety and Nutrition: Current Perspectives and Future Vision Survey

Risk benefit assessment in food safety and nutrition is evolving, integrating diverse disciplines and addressing imbalances between risk and benefits.

### Current Perspectives on Risk-Benefit Assessment in Food Safety and Nutrition: A Comprehensive Overview
* 🌐 The webinar provided an in-depth look at risk-benefit assessment (RBA) in food safety and nutrition, emphasizing the need to **balance risks and benefits** in decision-making.
* 📊 A systematic review identified **236 RBA cases**, with a focus on Europe but also involving the **US, Canada, and China**. Most RBAs were conducted by **research centers and universities**.
* 🐟 Fish was the most common food studied in RBAs, followed by various other foods like **seeds, dairy, and meat substitutes**.
* 🧪 RBAs typically integrated nutrition and toxicology, with microbiology less commonly included. There is a need to address **imbalances and uncertainties between risk and benefit assessments**.
* 🔮 The future of RBA may involve more **quantitative approaches**, potentially leveraging **artificial intelligence** to handle the **increasing volume of data** in this field.
* 🌱 There is a growing interest in assessing "**upcycled foods**" and other emerging food categories, highlighting the need for **continuous development in RBA methodologies**.
* 🏛 The webinar also discussed the challenge of **integrating different fields (microbiology, toxicology, nutrition)** in RBA, as well as the importance of **including sustainability considerations**.
* 📊 Attendees were invited to participate in a survey to gather more insights on RBA, with the goal of **broadening the discussion and promoting wider application of RBA** in the food and nutrition sector.

and Welcome to our webinar on current perspective on risk benefit assessment in food safety and nutrition. Where Do We Stand? I will introduce myself. So, I'm Jalin, but I'm an associate professor in France at N Atlantic College of Veterinary Medicine, Food Science, and Engineering. I'm a researcher at the National Research Center in Food, Agriculture, and Environment. Today, we will present to you a project that we are working on with this working group. And before we start, I will remind you that we are recording this session. So, if you have any issue with that, please, you can exit the room. And this is for having it for a replay session. Our scientific project manager is Con Z. Thank you for your support. And here is the list of experts involved in our group. And you see in green the five speakers you we have today. We will start by an introduction on the ERBA activity. And I will do it instead of Neil book. And then H be and will let you know what is risk benefit.

assessment in food safety and nutrition. I will continue with an update of what has been done so far, what we have collected up to now, and we will have a discussion with Alan Boies. And at the end, you will have T. Bank introducing a survey that we are starting to identify what are the needs and the limitations. Let's start with an introduction. So, the consumption of food, we all know it can have both negative and positive consequences to have, and it's quite key in our society to reduce the risk and to maximize the benefits. But how can we take a decision and to support management option on the substance of food and how can be effective in assessing this balance. So, the logic is to use health impact assessment, risk-benefit assessment that we call RPA, and to have inputs for decision-making process. But today, everything is not yet developed and the criteria that we are using in our PA are very important and we need to be transparent on each decision that is taken. We also need to

take decision all along the risk benefit assessment process and there is a lack of effectiveness in the traditional risk mitigation strategy measure designed to take it on a good way. In addition, when the risk and benefits are closely balanced, we need a risk benefit assessment to best estimate and try to find what are the different boundaries and how we can. Let me just so our expert group activity where our objective was to explore the factors for to for risk benefit assessment to understand why it has not been yet widely applied since it started. What are the lesson learned from the previous cases, what is available in term of guidance and the publication that could facilitate and how it can be applied, what is the added value and how we can formulize. We have three steps, we are in the first part on the review stage that we will present today. In this tab, we also investigate with the stakeholders their understanding of this review course this review that we are

uh updating there will be also available. And then we will have a try stage where we will uh apply and conduct some risk benefit assessment before taking some um ideas and listen to consolidate RPA in the future. And all of that will be uh available through publication and communicated uh through webinars. Are we are having today. I will now pass the floor to H veren for the first presentation to introduce what is risk benefit assessment in food safety and nutrition. Okay thank you Geraldine. I need to put it in presenting mode. I assume you now can see it. Yes. Okay. Okay. So thanks for the nice introduction Geraldine. And I'll be happy to present a few slides on what is risk benefit assessment in food safety and nutrition. Let's first look at what we are traditionally doing. I was raised as a toxicologist and a nutritionist. And uh traditionally we only focus either on the risks or on the benefits. And then further reductionistic uh on one Hazard or one benefit one food one Health effect.

as we consume foods that may not be realistic. As is not realistic because food can be associated with both benefits, as well as risks, and this calls for an integrated approach, which we can call. We should call risk-benefit assessment. Some examples because we looking at Food unsafe food unhealthy food, and we may need to balance the one versus the other. As an example, we could look at the health impact of 30 grams of nuts per day versus no nuts. We could look at the health impact of decreasing Dairy consumption from let's say 500 grams a day to half of it, 250 grams a day. We could look at the health impact of food reformulation by reducing salt. We could look at the health impact of substituting meat by fish by pulses by insects, perhaps. And we could look at the health impact of food fortification with folic acid, and so on, and so on. Let's further explain it a little bit along the line of the ne last example before the GU at fortification. This is this traditional figure of

illustrating Dietary Reference values PE people we need an average requirement. We Define a population reference intake as two standard deviations above the average requirement, and that should, uh, fulfill the needs for everyone in the population. Nearly everyone. Let's go for, uh, a hypothetical intake of a micronutrient. For instance, the average intake is 120, and in this particular curve, you see that most people will, uh, meet this. But there is a small part of the population that are at risk of adverse Health effect because of too low an intake. This can cause a problem for Risk Managers, and they can take a decision. Let's fortify and increase the average intake, and you can see that this has been done very successfully in this theoretical example. But you have another problem. You see that at the high end, there is a small part of the population that is at risk of adverse Public Health effect because of two high intakes. If we then combine the two figures, we can see, uh, that there is possibilities of adverse Health effect because of too low or of too high intakes as risk assessors.

we can describe the curves, we can present them to risk managers, risk benefit managers, and they should take a decision to go for the one or the other option, or perhaps any other alternative. This is not a theoretical example because we did illustrate this a couple of 15 years ago, uh, for folic acid integrated risk benefit example, um, developed along folic acid, and we have been taking a look at the evidenced health effects associated with folic acid. Uh, it firmly established that folic acid decreases the incidence of neural tube defects, that's a clear benefit. It's also well established that folic acid does mask vitamin B12 deficiency, which is a clear risk, and this may lead to neurological disorders, irreversible if they too long. Fic acid is also associated with colorectal cancer incidence, uh, it decreases and it increases colorectal cancer risk depending on the type of colorectal cancer. It has both a benefit as well as a risk, and the last incidence that is firmly established is that folic acid clearly overcomes folate.

deficiency, which obviously is a benefit. So, folic acid is associated with benefits as well as risks. For the Netherlands situation, along these examples, we have calculated what would be the public health consequences of fortification of bread with folic acid at 70 micrograms a day. We calculated that in the Netherlands each year, we would have 83 incident cases less of neural tube defects, which is good. We also calculated the percentage of benefits received, 37, and we also calculated DALYs, the disability-adjusted life years, which is around gained 5 and a half thousand around. We also calculated these figures for vitamin B12 deficiency and neurological disorders. We had an calculated incident of 53 each year, which increases the incident by 1%, and we lose 53 dollars each year. And we did do similar calculations for colorectal cancer. You can see these figures repeated here again. Overall, it's beneficial, but I pasted this in light green on purpose because there's a huge uncertainty with these.

estimates, not with the mere fact, but with the incident cases. So overall, we could say that increasing that fortification with folic acid increases Public Health. The Netherlands uh decided not to increase uh food, U food fortification with folic acid, but go for another option, is supplementation of uh supplement. Okay, that's another issue. Technically, risk-benefit assessment goes along two lines. The left part in this is the classical risk assessment Paradigm, where we do Hazard identification and then Hazard I characterization in combination with exposure assessment. It leads to risk characterization, then leading to calculations of risk incidents, duration, mortality, severity, Etc. alongside exactly the same Paradigm, we go for the benefits. We identify the positive Health effect, we characterize the positive Health effect in combination with exposure, we um characterize the benefit, and we calculate the incidence in duration, mortality, severity as the same. And what is important, that this is done using a common health metrics, so then we can compare likes with likes, and apples not apples and oranges, as you say in English. So this is the classical

scheme. What is relevant to realize is that if with risk benefit assessment, we compare effects with effects, so we step away from the classical risk assessment paradigm where we try to avoid anything to happen. For food safety, this is the example again of folic acid, where we combined in the example, the risks of inadequacy for a variety effects with the risks of adverse effects at too high intakes for vitamin B12 deficiency. What we do not do in risk benefit is comparing effects with the absence of effects. No, we go for real effects, for good or for bad. And this is interesting to realize that here the thinking of a toxicologist or a risk assessor is completely different from the risk assessment by a nutritionist. As toxicologists, we have learned to start with high dose levels, go for the so-called no observed effect levels, apply inter and intra species variation factors in order to achieve things like acceptable daily intakes. So, a toxicologist has been trained to argue towards nothing will happen.

nutritionist on the other hand is thinking in the opposite way. And a pist want something to happen and so the dose needs to be sufficiently high enough in order to achieve something. And this very nice captures the thinking in Risk benefit assessment going from effects to effects. And especially the toxicologist need to depart from their classical Paradigm that nothing must happen nothing may happen. Rich benefit assessment has been developed over the years. And in particular the EU Project Bravo benefit the risk assessment of food which is ILY Le in 2012 published its final outcome and says when you want to produce a real risk benefit assessment you start with preassessment and problem formulation which can be complex by itself. So you in the uh early phase you define at least two scenarios a reference scenario as well as an alternative scenario. And then you start with tier one seeing whether there is a clear benefit or there's a clear risk. And then you can advise for the one or the other option. If that is not immediately clear you can go to a

qualitative integration of U benefits and risk. See if the one is more uh prominent than the other one. You can still stop advising the reference or the alternative. And if that does not help at that stage, you go for either a deterministic or a probabilistic computation of risks versus benefits. And then calculate what is the overall Public Health outcome. A such risk benefit has a couple of characteristics. Actually, there are three. First, you need to define the problem. At least two scenarios to choose from. If you're going to say, Give me the risk benefit of this situation, it will not work because you need to compare with something else. You need a common currency to describe the health impacts. This can be dollars, disability-adjusted life years, it can be incident cases, it can be Euros if you want. So, ETC, but you need one common currency to compare likes with likes. And you'd better do it in a tiered way. Once you know the answer, once you know the outcome, you know what um option to what scenario to choose. And then further refinement may not be

necessary risk benefit has some history. I think it's now about two decades old, and if we may need to take one moment in time starting with benefit analysis and food safety and nutrition. For me, it would be the 2004 ILY Europe paper of risk benefit in micronutrients. Over the years, as you can see, FSA has also started working in it. They had a scientific Locum in 2006, leading to a guidance in 2010. Around that time, several EU projects were started. Bravo I already referred to with calibra berer and bbrian, but that's for another time. There have been a couple of international workshops in the 2015-2017, particularly in the Scandinavian country, but also other institutes have organized. FSA has been involved in risk benefit development. They supported a couple of international projects rb4 EU n enough RBA altern Diva Etc. They have produced a couple of years ago, and now it's 2024, and what has happened here is the

LZ risk benefit task force, already alluded to by Ziral Dean, started in 2011. And also, EPSA is taking this further. They had another scientific log in 20122 and are about to publish their updated guideline, presumably in 2024. But I need to, uh, see it still. Alongside, there is now a risk benefit assessment European expert Network, which is led by the Danish Technical University, and you're quarterly invited to join this. Relevant to realize that, uh, for the risk analysis, we have, uh, risk analysis Paradigm, the interplay between risk assessment, risk management, and risk communication. Uh, the risk assessment part is done by the scientist. Risk Managers is the policy makers, and risk communication, that's another ball game. The same Paradigm is actually applicable to risk benefit assessment, as already identified by EPSA in 2010. That should mirror the risk analysis Paradigm. And at this stage, I would say risk benefit assessment calls for a paradigm shift. We have been trained that food shall be safe. If it's not safe, it's

not food. That was the saying for the last two decades, which is fair, but I think we can do better in the 21st century. And then we say, If I want food that is best to eat, so shift from full food safety to optimal food safety. And with this remark, I would say thank you for your attention and I'm available for any further discussion, but I hand over to Geraldine as the chair of this event. Thanks, thank you, Hans. Let's continue now with the update of the review. Just one second. So in this working group, we have updated what has been done so far in this benefit assessment, and we will provide an update. I'm happy to do it now because I started 10 years ago with a first review, and it's now time to update them. So we wanted to see what was done and to highlight what are the trends in this area because it was starting 20 years ago and now it's developing quite a lot. And also we wanted to create kind of a database to

facilitate future use. Why we need to facilitate. As you can see here on this figure, if you look look at the available information linking risk benefits and food without mentioning in your real you see that the amount of publication per year is very high. We have now more than 1,000 publication on this topic every year. They are not a proper risk benefit assessment, but they are providing key information. On the other hand, if you look at people's mentioning the exact name of this real hisis benefit assessment input, you capture very little information. So, we needed to explore using more precise words and to be able to capture also studies from the area of food safety and nutrition, including microbiology, toxicology, chemistry, epidemiology, bur of disas estimates using the indicator they qual and so. And I want to thank the team who did the data extraction. Here you have the name of all the people who contributed in this work. Thank you very much. What we have done is that we started with the information that um.

that we collected 10 years ago. In the first triun, his benefit assessment. And at this time, it's even when I started in this research. We get 70 his benefit assessment cases collected, which is very little in research. Then in 2020, one, a review on efficiency food wi benefit assessment was published, and it was introducing 106 cases somewhere already included in the first review. So we have to cate in between. So at this time, the total amount of publication were around 130 something like that. We held a new review from T. Wang at Al in 2022, including all Foods in the period of 2014 up to 2022. So our objective was to synthesize all of this article and to update to conduct a new systematic review for this new last two years period of time. This systematic review was conducted for the search in February, and it included studies characterizing quantitatively or semiquantitatively risk and benefits associated with a food, a nutrient, a diet contaminant, and in which different scenario were included to um to make.

different comparison in this could be also studies exploring different risk management measures efficiency. What was excluded are all the studies that identify potential hisan benefits without making any comparison of scenario or any quantification. So that's why we excluded. What you have in this figure is a synthesis of all the information included in this new review. On the left part, this is the new search for the past two years and you see that only during this two years we have collected 15,000 papers including potential risk benefit assessment because they included the different risk or benefits in food. And at the end the number included from this 15,000 are 13 so that's really a little part from this area. And on the right side, they saw the papers included from the three different reviews plus other sources. So by tracking the different references at the end the total number of cases are 236 that are included in the syntheses. What we have extracted for this papers are information about the topics. So what is the scale of the RBA is it at the diet level the food.

food component. What are the different food components included? And also, who is doing this RBA? Is it done in the area of research? Is it by a food safety agency? And also, what are the disciplines included? Is it nutrition, toxicology, microbiology? So, we focus only on health, but we have collected also additional information if other topics were included. We also investigated the question itself and the components included. So, how is reported the his benefit question? What is the population of interest? Which country and which subpopulation? The different scenario component and half outcome. We also look at the method if they mention the methods that H mentioned before. If they follow the thefa guidance or the bra for time approach. And you will have references at the end if you want to explore more this different guidances. What are also the different ways to quantify the risk and benefits? And this I will explain also later. And the different kind of calculation if they use deterministic approach or toas it one. And what are the key result of each study? The main conclusion, the gap identify and the

intended use. And just to remind you, we had 236 cases. So, I will not detail all of them, but to provide you some sentences and some trends where R VA St. So, which country benefits from assessment here? What you see is the map built on the data extracted, and you see that Europe is quite active in risk benefit assessment with different countries, but also US, Canada, and China. And we also have a big part of the world who is not yet benefiting from his benefit assessment. What you have on the left part is a non-exhaustive list of food safety agencies that have cont contributing also Tois benefit assessment. Who is doing the most of the time? It involves uh different research centers and University. More than 62% of C of of peoples involved are from this fields, but also some regulators, some some ministry, some countries might contribute the food safety agencies, and very little uh industry communicates to publication uh risk benefit assess. What are the different scope of risk benefit assessment? You will see they are very diverse in the topics.

explored. They are only one exploring a food diet like organic food, and most of them focus on food or food components. So, the food is the blue part, and the food components are the yellow ones. So, the topic is mainly fish or some substance in fish like DHA, dioxin, L. monocytogenes. We also have a number of study that are related to health outcome, so they target a specific one like the neurodevelopmental effect or specific cancer. And this is the objective, is to investigate this specific one. Some of them are looking at the manufacturing process effect, looking for some optimization, for instance of the heat treatment, or looking for the formulation of the foods, the food supplementation, the additional removal of salt, this kind of topic. And finally, one that is very key and it started to develop quite recently is the substitution area. So, this includes bigger risk benefit assessment where the assessment is about, for instance, what if we replace beef meats by fish or by insect in the full diet. So, this is more complex because you

assess at the same time several foods with a large amount of different components. So this is a view on the scope. What are the different question address? They are also diverse. We have some question about the food Choice system to support food dietary guidance. It could be also about the cooking practices. What if we eat something that is raw or can or B? The different process might be investigated in Industry. The main topics are the food formulation or the process manufacturing process optimization. In nutrition, there is also clear interest to investigate for specific nutrients, the deficiency versus toxicity, or different protective effects through food consumption. They are also interest in animal feed and reading practices to see, for instance, the effect of farm versus wild salmon. There were some cases, and at the end, we also could identify plant treatment. This is also nonexhaustive, but just give you a view on this topics. What are the different food included. So here you see according to time, that the number of publication is not increasing so much. It is quite stable between the years 2005 and now.

and the blue. I'm sure you can guess which food it is. It is about fish. Fish is the most common risk benefit assessment that was undertaken. And then here what you have is a list of all the other foods but we're also investigated. And this is very diverse. It includes, for instance, lean seed, seaweeds, red meat, coffee, dairy, infant CS, tea, cacao, rice. There were several cases about rice quite recently and mushroom also in P formul breast milk, nuts, salt, treat, and vegetables. So you see there is a lot of potential of application. But for most of the cases, only few cases were done so far. And you see that recently in the years 20121 and 2022, there were quite a lot of diversification in the topics considered. So we will see in the coming years if that's a trend or if that was just a period. What are the different research areas included the industries benefit assessment here you see the number of cases integrating the TR microbiology, toxicology, and nutrition.

this included only eight cases. Some focused only on nutrition, looking at different risk and benefits and toxicology. We also had four cases including topics of Toxicology versus nutrition, only one for micronutrition, and the biggest part is including toxicology and nutrition. This is directly linked with the fish risk benefit assessment where, um, the most the bigger concern is all nutrition and toxicology. Microbiology is also an issue linked with fish and it was included in the CER in the old cases. Here is the list of the different components that are included in the studies, uh, you have the different nutrition nutrients that were included so far. You have also the different chemicals and biological Haz. So you can see that of course none of the studies include all of them and this is not necessary but we started to have a good and large view on the potential for future application. Now how risk and benefits are integrated and compared. There are three strategies that we mentioned before with an. The first is using safety reference levels so the objective in

this is to do an exposure assessment of the consumer and to compare this level of exposure with health-based guidance value like tolerable weekly intake. This is the blue part. More than 71% of cases are using this method. We also have 18% including a common metric, and the common metric could be the number of corner that is linked with an exposure or decreased with another exposure. It could be also inal question points. It's when you look at the same metric for different exposures. And we have the third level, the composite metric, that is the last common option. This one, the D and qual, is used in less than 15%. You see here it evolves according to time. So the safety, the use of safety level system, most common option, and we see that it was the case in the Years 2005. It is still the case. It's not increasing so much, quite stable. We also have to use a common metric that is still present and stable also, and the use of composite metric in total was

quite more frequent in the past three years, and it was already used since the year 2000. Now, each approach has advantage and limitations. So, just to highlight that it was explained by H that in nutrition, we look at the two different SS: a minimum and the maximum of exposure, which is very different compared to chemistry. Way we look for maximum level of exposure, and this way of making comparison does not really apply to microbiology. The advantage of this use is that is the easy one, the most accessible because you stop at the exposure assessment without quantifying health impact. It has limitation because you consider equal each uh, each um component with the same weight. So, you look at the exposure with regard to all components, and you don't prioritize any. The common matric could be the number of cases increased or decreased with a put consumption like cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke. Uh, this is a really easy to understand because you talk about the same disease, but you can also look at mortality or morbidity years or even the years of life lost.

some biological parameters, some days of work lost, or some cost. Even so, you can make a comparison that is very easy to understand. But the limitation is that if you have a big case like a food substitution, what is the impact of substituting beef meats by fish? This will include a lot of different health outcomes, so you cannot talk in terms of number of cases, and you will quickly be very limited with this option. The last option that is quite interesting is the use of disability-adjusted life here. It's an K to that is not from the area of risk-benefit assessment. It is already used since years and years in burden of disease estimate, and the principle of this metric is that you count the disability, the years of life lived with disability, and the years of life lost in case of premature death. The advantage of this metric is that you can compare health outcomes that are very different, and you will have a different level in terms of t. For instance, you can compare a cancer with a ghea with a

specific um deficiency or something else, so this is very easy to um compare and integrate at the end. And one it represent one years in perfect life lost. The limitation is that it requires a fully finalized risk assessment up to the estimate of the number of cases, plus the translation in term of Val. So, it is difficult to reach this final stage because of data availability sometimes or lack of modeling expertise. And then it will introduce also some uncertainty, uh, in the different estimates. Now, what are the main result from the 236 studies? Well, this will be available, but I will not give one big summary of all the results because each Heth benefit assessment is unique, and we cannot extrapolate from one RBA to give a general recommendation to all country. What you can do is that you need to consider that there are variability among the countries and the different subpopulation because the food composition in term of nutrients and also in term of contaminants must be, we will be likely different between the different situation. Also, the consumer habits and the background diets are

different the incidence of the disease also so the objective is to reuse the method that was done in the other cases, but not to use the results themselves, and this is our perspectives. We want to make the SES available to facilitate reuse. 236 cases is quite a large amount of studies where you might be interested in the future in the same food, and you can reuse previous studies to facilitate identification on the different components involved. Or you might be interested in a specific component like arenic, and you can be guided in the health selection of the health outcomes or the choice of Health P guidance value of those response, or even you could be interested in applying same a but in a different countries where you can use a different set of food intake, food contaminant, and so on. So this could really apply, and this will facilitate good substitution assessment because in a food substitution you have a large amount of food to be included, and it is necessary to um to have all each one assessed. So this could be uh interesting. We also through this task have

identified some topics of interest. There is a big interest on different meat protein substitutes to guide the food transition, not only because of health, but health is included and must be as same. Also, they were interesting arbi on about the coffee and could be integrated with a different national situation because the coffee consumption is varying a lot between the country in terms of intake, in terms of contaminant position, and the scenario will be very different. There are also big interest in the assessment of beef versus cultured meats, whole grain cereals versus refined cereals, and there are a lot of people talking about ultra-processed versus non-processed food, but this latter one is still not clear because the definition of the attribution of a food in one category or the other one is not really defined, but there are a lot of people wondering about this case. And so more broadly, here we have talk about human health associated with food consumption and diet, but this diet and food is evolving to face different environmental issues, and we need to go

into a more one Health approach, where we consider also the health of the environment and the health of the animals to support and to design safe nutrition and sustainable diets and Foods. So RBA is a part of this human half um topic, but is interconnected with the one and must be considered in such way. Here are the references that I mentioned, the different reviews, the systematic review approach, and the different guides, the one from ETA, the one from Theo, and the onea will be published soon with a new version. Thank you very much for your attention. If you have any question, you can contact me, of course, and I will now pass the floor to Professor Alan bu for a the question and answer section. Thank you. Well, thank you, Geraldine. Good afternoon. I'm Alan bubis, Emeritus professor of Toxicology, Imperial College London. Um, we've presented quite a lot of information to you on RBA over a relatively short period of time, so we'd like to give you the opportunity um to ask any questions you might have of the

speakers, or indeed more generally, about RBA, and we'll try to answer them. If you have a question, please use the raised hand function in Zoom. No questions? Well, I'll start off, Geraldine. One of the issues that we often come across in RBA is the imbalance and uncertainty between the risk assessment and the benefit assessment, or the risk database and the benefit database. Is that something that you found being addressed in the assessments that we looked at? First of all, you're completely right. For the risk assessment part, we are trying to reduce as much as possible the uncertainty and we take any risk, whereas for the beneficial part, we needed to have something very obvious with a high level of evidence. So this is very imbalanced, and I would say nowadays, this is still the case in RBA, but not in all RBA. There is a trend, also this part we did not discuss, to get more quantitative risk benefit assessment where we try to quantify also the

uncertainty from both parts risk and benefits. In such situation, using stochastic Co can help to get a more balanced choice that is not um oriented toward only the benefits. So this is evolving, and the method can support. Yes, I may a question from Stefan pedre at LC Global um to all our presenters: What impact do you think artificial intelligence will make um on the field? What do you want me to answer, Alan H could see what he thinks. Okay, so I I think we can benefit a lot from AI because this is in fact very challenging to conduct the risk-benefit assessment. We needed to collect a lot of information and to expore all of testony. And you see that we are more and more data available, so even only during this review was quite challenging in terms of time. So I think we are interested in using AI now. I I'm not sure we are really I know for the systematic review part. There are some uh development to support. We did not use personally in this exercise, but you can train some uh

tools to guide you. But um, this is not yet done. I don't think they are initiative at the moment, but the need is here. So maybe this could be a topic in a future project. The course of development now has got to the point where it's inevitable. It's going somebody's going to try and use it. H you could effective. Yeah, maybe that links in with the question that I posted in the chat box. Uh, I've been working in the area for risk benefit now for two decades. And uh, typically the questions are not put by the Risk Managers because it may be uncomfortable to give in to safety assessments in order to get a better benefit. And I wonder what uh, Geraldine Alens, others view way. How can we convince policymakers that let's say utter food safety may not be optimal for Public Health. Well, I I agree with you. H in fact, this could be in food safety agency included. And they have the capacity in the way that they have the different department.

of nutrition, toxicology, and microbiology, and also about to modeling, data analysis, and so on. I think I see the things are changing. There are different institutes where they have made some connection. They have built some groups where they try to break the frontiers between the different units. But what is needed is also to train these people with the basics of each field because to work together, you need to have a common language and to understand what the other ones are doing. So I think you are right. There is, I don't know if they are uncomfortable or if it's that they need to get a culture, an organization, a way of working. So this probably will evolve, I guess, in the next decade. I hope so too. I think we have to recognize that there is a need for a major culture change because what's happened in the last 30 years is there's been a divergence of nutrition from food safety because of VSE, and that was the way.

that epsa was set up and the food safety authorities in many countries have been set up to just separate um the issue of food safety from other aspects of food um so in the UK nutrition has dealt with a different depart by a different department from food safety and so I think that as we we need we need this more holistic view absolutely and what's happening is the policy makers are recognizing that they can't answer the questions with a simple um problem um assessment on risk or benefit they do need both but they're not optimally integrated at the present time and I think that message needs to come across partly through um illustrative case examples and partly just through um demonstrating the need we have a question we had a question this appeared um a couple of questions in the chat we've got is there a plan for risk benefit assessment of upcycled foods anybody you want to try that answer that yeah why why not let's say typically as Geraldine said most of the assignments

are in the area of risk benefit of face but there's many more examples so uh also this can call for a decent risk benefit assessment of which the challenge I would be Define the risk benefit question so what what do we compare upcycle foots with and that that can take a couple of days and then just start doing it and maybe it provides an answer that is very comfortable towards let's say the system of upcycling we're we're coming to the end of our Q&A and we' several more questions could I ask um the speakers uh to look at the questions that are in the chat haven't been answered and if possible provide an answer by email to help her and if I can just answer a last one just the last island is the one um about the different fields because I think this is very important someone asked if we could get longer risk management conclusion in the case where we don't take into account the three aspects microbiology toxicology and nutrition and also

sustainability. Um, I think that's a clear debate because nowadays a lot of RIS benefit assessment are including only nutrition and toxicology, and microbiology is very different in terms of method. Now, I think it's very important to integrate them because if you look at fish, for instance, fish is responsible for a large part in the burden of disease associated to woodborne pathogens. So, missing this part can give, to my opinion, wrong conclusion or put the consumer in more at risk situation or non-optimal situation. I think it is not necessary to integrate all the time the three areas quantitatively, but at least in the frame of the question according to the food you are exploring, you need to pay attention that the different scenarios, if they are influencing also the microbiological parts. For instance, if you want to reduce the treatment to reduce some chemicals that are found during the post process and preserve some nutrients, you will increase microbiological risk. So, you cannot let it aside and ignore this part. So,

all questions are not systematically addressed with the Tri Area, but they would Des serve this part, and the inclusion of sustainability. I think is more and more needed. Also, because uh, any choice that you can make and suggest can have a broader influence. And as we have seen Tre Health, the human environmental and Animal Health are interconnected, so if you don't pay attention to one in a way, this will go back to you. So you don't have really the choice. I think the reality is that sustainability is often looked at as part of the policy discussion. It's, it's what we call another, another legitimate Factor, but it's there isn't a, a consistent framework to them all. I think that's what we need to think about okay. I think we have to terminate our Q&A there. Thank you all for your participation. As I say um, we'll try and answer all the questions offline, and I will ask T hang to um, introduce another activity the expert group is embarking on. So t T you should turn on your M microphone T.

hi everyone, my name is Tong. I'm a regulatory scientist based in Singapore with the Nang Technological University. So, I'm going to introduce our survey, our risk benefit assessment Future Vision survey. So, this survey has been developed in collaboration with everyone from the risk benefit assessment expert group. So, through this survey, we would like to know what you think of risk benefit assessment, and our aim is to broaden the discussion on RBA so that it can be more widely applied in the food and nutrition space globally. This survey consists of 20 questions, and everyone's welcome to fill in the survey. The survey is anonymous; none of the questions are actually mandatory, except that you have to agree that your response would be used for research purposes by ILC. The survey will be circulated via email after the webinar. It'll be open for a month, so please access the survey before July 7th. We are looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts on risk benefit assessment. And before you go, just one more thing, there's going to

be a satisfaction poll at the end of the webinar. So please do stay on, and it'll pop up on your Zoom screen. It'll be very helpful if you could rate this webinar. Thank you so much for your attention. Thank you all for participation.

Webinar - Current Perspectives on Risk-Benefit Assessment in Food Safety and Nutrition

ILSI Europe

The Current Perspective on Risk-Benefit Assessment in Food Safety and Nutrition

Jalin, an associate professor, presents a project on risk-benefit assessment in food safety and nutrition, discussing the need for a balanced approach to the assessment process.

The project aims to explore the factors affecting risk-benefit assessment and its limited application, with plans to conduct the assessment and consolidate findings for future publication and webinars.

H veren, a researcher, explains the traditional focus on either risks or benefits in food consumption and advocates for an integrated approach called risk-benefit assessment, using examples such as nut consumption and food fortification to illustrate the need for balancing the two aspects for public health.

The Risk-Benefit Assessment of Folic Acid Fortification

Folic acid has established benefits in decreasing neural tube defects and overcoming folate deficiency, but it also poses risks by masking vitamin B12 deficiency and impacting colorectal cancer risk.

The fortification of bread with folic acid in the Netherlands would result in fewer neural tube defect cases, but an increase in vitamin B12 deficiency incidents.

The risk-benefit assessment approach differs from the traditional risk assessment paradigm, as it compares real effects, both positive and negative, and has been developed to evaluate the impact of food fortification and supplementation.

The Evolution of Risk-Benefit Assessment in Food Safety and Nutrition

Risk-benefit assessment in food safety and nutrition has been developing over the past two decades, with a shift towards optimal food safety.

The field has seen a significant increase in publications, leading to the need for more precise terminology and data extraction methods.

A working group has been updating and highlighting the trends in benefit assessment, aiming to create a database for future use in the area.

The Evolution of Food Risk Benefit Assessment

A new systematic review was conducted to synthesize 236 cases of food risk benefit assessment from 2014 to 2022.

The review found that Europe is the most active in this type of assessment, with a focus on food and food components, health outcomes, and the substitution of different food types.

The majority of the research is done by research centers and universities, with very little contribution from the industry.

Diverse Food Risk-Benefit Assessment: A Comprehensive Overview

The study addresses various questions related to food choice systems, cooking practices, industrial processes, nutrition, animal feed, and plant treatment.

Fish is the most common food investigated, followed by a diverse range including seeds, seaweed, red meat, coffee, and dairy, among others.

The research areas included industry benefit assessment, microbiology, toxicology, and nutrition, with a focus on integrating risk and benefits through safety reference levels, common metrics, and composite metrics, each with its own advantages and limitations.

The use of these different approaches has evolved over time, with varying frequencies of application.

The Significance of Risk-Benefit Assessment in Food Substitution

Risk-Benefit Assessment (RBA) plays a crucial role in comparing the impact of food substitutions on health outcomes, using parameters like disability-adjusted life years.

The 236 studies provide valuable insights into the variability of food composition, consumer habits, and disease incidence across different countries, guiding the assessment of meat protein substitutes, coffee, cultured meats, cereals, and ultra-processed foods.

RBA not only focuses on human health but also emphasizes a one Health approach, considering the health of the environment and animals to support sustainable nutrition and diets.

Challenges and Evolution of Risk-Benefit Assessment in RBA

Risk assessment is focused on reducing uncertainty, while the benefit assessment requires a high level of evidence, creating an imbalance in RBA.

There is a growing trend towards quantitative risk-benefit assessment to address this imbalance, with the potential use of AI to handle the increasing amount of available data.

Policymakers need to be convinced of the need for a more holistic view that integrates both risk and benefit assessments, which will require a major culture change.

Survey on Risk Benefit Assessment in Food and Nutrition

A survey on risk benefit assessment in the food and nutrition field is being introduced by Tong, a regulatory scientist based in Singapore.

The survey, developed in collaboration with the expert group, aims to broaden the discussion on risk benefit assessment for global application and will be open for a month.

A satisfaction poll for the webinar will also be available at the end, and participants are encouraged to provide feedback.