European Food Industry advocates for non-animal safety assessment approaches

SERS experts Adam Wood, Paul Hepburn, and Ans Punt have co-authored a new FoodDrinkEurope publication on opportunities to maximise regulatory use of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) and Next Generation Risk Assessment (NGRA) in Food Safety Assessment. This publication makes several suggestions to further develop these NAMs and to modernise regulatory requirements to enhance their use in food safety assessments. These could be implemented as part of the European Commission Roadmap currently being developed to phase out animal testing for chemical safety assessment and aligns with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) strategy to transition to NGRA approaches in the long-term.

1. Poster of this work presented by Adam at the 2025, annual Society of Toxicology (SOT) meeting in Orlando, Florida.
   Countdown to 2027: maximising NAMs in food safety assessment: closing the gap for regulatory assessments in Europe (PDF 949.27 KB)
2. FoodDrinkEurope’s 2023 position paper on the integration of new approach methodologies in food safety risk assessment
   Joint position: Integration of New Approach Methodologies in food safety risk assessment - FoodDrinkEurope : FoodDrinkEurope
3. Link to open-access publication
   Countdown to 2027 – maximising use of NAMs in food safety assessment: closing the gap for regulatory assessments in Europe