JRC hosts a meeting to strengthen its collaboration with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)

On 5^th April JRC-Ispra hosted a delegation from EFSA to discuss specific topics of common interest in the area of risk assessment related to chemicals.

A workshop was organised to discuss ongoing joint projects and explore topics of common interest to pave the road for further collaboration. It involved 19 experts from EFSA and several colleagues from the JRC Directorates D and F. Different subjects were on the agenda spanning from endocrine disruptors to environmental modelling and risk assessment.

One group of experts focused on the area of combined exposure to chemical mixtures, a topic where a regular collaboration between EFSA and JRC is already successful. The use of JRC and EFSA data bases and tools supporting mixture assessments have been discussed and will be further intensified, e.g. in the JRC developed and hosted IPCheM, the Information Platform on Chemical Monitoring. In relation to mode of action and particularly endocrine disruptors, many of the issues and knowledge gaps identified by EFSA are already being addressed by the JRC with novel test methods and improvement of existing test guidelines. In most cases a collaboration and exchange of ideas are already in place.

Integrated approaches to risk and hazard assessment were also considered. Further to developing regulatory guidance, JRC and EFSA can collaborate on the development of case studies that illustrate the utility of new approach method data in the risk assessment of food-relevant chemicals.

Further discussions covered how environmental data sets generated by the JRC can be used in EFSA's risk assessments on plant and animal diseases. In some research areas, such as forest ecology and meteorology for agricultural modelling, the JRC already provides such support to EFSA in a regular manner. On the other hand, additional areas were identified where JRC data bases and data sets are of particular interest to EFSA. EFSA and JRC already share a vision for the development of an integrated environmental risk assessment tool. To complement and reinforce the on-going collaborations between JRC and EFSA in the area of assessment of pesticides, a shared strategy towards a practical implementation of the model for European scale assessment was discussed, building on the existing PERSAM tool and JRC water quality models.

A new collaboration agreement between EFSA and the JRC is in establishment.