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Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 17:35:24 +0100
Reply-To: PSA Forum
Sender: PSA Forum
From: fao.who.psaforum@WHO.INT
Subject: EU Food Safety Statistics: Dr Pirjo-Liisa Penttilä
Comments: To: psaforum@who.int
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Note from Moderator: The message below from Dr Pentilla has been modified to include the comments originally provided in an attachment.

Dear Moderator

I have been working as consultant with the Eurostat project Food Safety Statistics. This opinion is given also as independant expert from JECFA Roster.

EU has started coordination of data delivery of food safety. The responsibility of this task has given to EUROSTAT unit F5. This new unit will be in the Future responsible for collecting data for different directorates and EFSA including scientific information from member states. These new activities are linked to the project Food Safety Statistics. As being scientific adviser in this project and member of the JECFA roster, I would like to point out some opinions:

(a part from my presentation in Eurostat meeting 13 and 14 November 2003 in Luxembourg)

EU countries are in active cooperation with international organisations. Data is delivered quite often directly from national institutes to these organisations. Similar data is delivered to the EU by official national authorities. Sometimes EU data from these two origins is totally different due to different data sources. Another reason is different food classification or nomenclature systems.

Both standard development (risk management) and risk assessment work is supported by data collection. Quite often food quality and safety data is collected at ad hoc bases for standards, which are under development. Statistical information is quite seldom available or is limited. At the present member states deliver their local data directly to Codex co-operation. Data delivering is voluntary and can be organised differently in each country. Institutes or separate researchers can deliver food safety data directly to scientific bodies.

EU Commission participates into the work of Codex Committees submitting European data collected officially from member states. Officially collected data can be different from the data submitted by separate institutes or data submitted from member states directly to Codex.

Several food classification systems or nomenclature systems can be used when food safety statistics are collected at EU or international levels. The preparation of reliable data on food requires precise identification of foods. As most databases employ different methods of identifying foods, it is difficult to exchange data between countries and different international organisations.

On food quality and safety area the Codex Alimentarius food standards have been bases to many different classification systems. The systems have partly been implemented also into EU legislation. The FAO food balance sheet classification is based on trade balance of food and agricultural commodities. This classification has been used in the WHO GEMS/FOODS project in order to estimate pesticide exposure at regional level.

However there are totally different food classification systems for special purposes like exposure assessment of food additives, contaminants and toxins or nutrient. In these systems classification is mainly based on readymade products on the market. The different classification systems are problematic especially for risk assessment, where detailed information of the consumption of specific products is needed.

A common food classification system is also needed to make food consumption data at the food level comparable. International organisations have worked at European level to improve linking food consumption data to nutrient databases. The latest effort the EPIC-SOFT food classification was developed by IARC and EPIC centres (EPIC: European Prospective Investigation into Cancer, WHO IARC, France).

The EFCOSUM -group (European Food Consumption Survey Method) advises in its latest report to wait for the European Nutrient Composition Database (ENDB) to be prepared by the EPIC-group. Until this is available, comparison of intake data at the nutrient level cannot be carried out between countries.

Cooperation and future work

EU has its own scientific network. It is important that partly parallel working scientific evaluation systems of the WHO and EU are provided with equal data from EU. Same situation is with the data needed for standardisation. Data delivery from member states should be organised within EU in order to improve quality of the data used both with the EU and the WHO. In order to coordinate data submission network systems of international organisations should be linked. The responsible national authorities should be pointed out and coordinated data submission to be enhanced. Coordination of data submission is also economically profitable solution.

International cooperation is actively going on in the sector of food classification. Different classifications can be separately used for specific data collection. However, there is urgent need to standardise classification of food consumption and data on nutrients, food additives or contaminants in foodstuffs in order to get internationally comparable data.

Dr. Pirjo-Liisa Penttilä
Head of Development
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
Department of Agriculture
Finance and Development Unit
P.O Box 30
FIN-00023 GOVERNMENT, Finland
Visiting address: Malminkatu 16 1st Floor, Helsinki

Tel.+358 9 160 52215
Fax +358 9 5765 2496
GSM +358 400 853215
Pirjo-Liisa.Penttila@mmm.fi