Food safety assessments

Problem Formulation in Food Safety Assessments conducted by the European Food Safety Authority

RSI investigators recently provided advice to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on the problem formulation step in the EFSA scientific assessment approach shown in the figure below.  The recommended problem formulation framework is designed to translate the mandate into well-formulated assessment questions and sub-questions, and select the methodological approach to be used in the assessment.  Over 700 EFSA scientific assessments conducted over the last two years were examined during the course of developing RSI’s recommendations to EFSA.  A novel aspect of the suggested approach was parsing the questions and sub-questions into an APRIO paradigm based on the agent (A), pathway (P), receptor(R), intervention (I) and output (O).

EFSA scientific assessment approach