EFSA

All food products in the EU must first be evaluated as being safe by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) before being put on the market. It is therefore very important for the food industry to have EFSA saying the right thing... and for EFSA to be rigorously independent from the food industry!

But the agency keeps being criticised for the conflicts of interests of the experts on its panels, who are regularly shown to receive money or be unduly influenced by the food industry. Why does the agency keep appointing the wrong people? Is there a way to improve the situation?

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Conflicts of interest are also the tip of a larger iceberg. By law, the data used by EFSA to assess a product is provided by the company producing this product, and EFSA cannot publish this data without being sued by the company at stake, so it never does it. This means the scientific community cannot audit what EFSA does. Which, in turns, means that what EFSA does is not science but something else: regulatory science. Can such a flawed system be changed, and how?

In this dedicated section, you can find our main publications documenting the problem as well as our suggestions for trying to fix it. The below video is an educational tool from 2012 explaining in 3 minutes what the major problems at EFSA are. (Also available in French or with Spanish subtitles here).

[video:http://vimeo.com/33337236]

Food

A Busy May For Professor Boobis

16.05.2016

This May is dense on the EU chemicals regulation front. Crunch time for two major files: the European Commission needs to publish the identification criteria for endocrine disrupting chemicals, and together with EU States must decide how, or not, renew the market approval of glyphosate, an herbicide produced and defended by Monsanto. Last week, the Professor Alan Boobis happened to be involved in both.
Food

The lobby firm that works both sides of the room

09.05.2016

Demonstrating the problematic symbiosis between corporate interests and EU institutions, the same lobbying consultancies often get hired by both.

A telling mistake

29.04.2016

Ms Barbara Gallani, who will become EFSA's Director for Communications from 1 May, was up until late March 2016 working for the largest lobby group for the food and drink industry in the UK, the Food and Drink Federation (FDF).
Food

EFSA appoints a food industry lobbyist as Communications Director and refuses to disclose why it did

18.03.2016

The EU Food Safety Authority refuses to disclose new Director's Declaration of Interests and its own assessment of this person's interests.
EU institutions

Conflicts of Interest at the European Food Safety Authority: Enough is enough!

02.03.2016

An Open Letter to the European Parliament's Budget Control Committee
EU institutions

Glyphosate relicensing - the story so far

02.03.2016

The relicensing procedure for one of the world's most widely used herbicides
Food

Key evidence withheld as 'trade secret' in EU's controversial risk assessment of glyphosate

17.02.2016

Companies who make the pesticide glyphosate refuse to disclose key scientific evidence about its possible risks in the name of trade secrets protection. CEO appeals to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to disclose all the possible original elements of three key scientific studies it used in assessing glyphosate as “unlikely” to cause cancer to humans. We also call MEPs to reject the Trade Secrets Directive in the April 2016 plenary vote on the final text.
Food

EU review of weedkiller glyphosate adds secrecy to controversy

14.01.2016

More than 80 per cent of the national experts involved in the EU's official assessment of glyphosate refused to have their names disclosed to the public.
Food

EFSA and Member States vs. IARC on Glyphosate: Has Science Won?

25.11.2015

Monsanto and the pesticide industry breathed a collective sigh of relief on 12 November 2015. The findings of an investigation into the toxicity of glyphosate by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and EU Member States were in stark contradiction to the March 2015 conclusion by the International Agency for Research against Cancer (IARC), a body of the World Health Organization (WHO), that this agricultural herbicide was probably causing cancer to humans. If validated, this conclusion could cause a partial ban of glyphosate in the EU. [UPDATED on 30 11 2015 16.30 CET]
EU institutions

Glyphosate – Need for a robust and credible scientific assessment of carcinogenicity

02.11.2015

Open letter to Commissioner Andriukaitis on glyphosate
EU institutions

EFSA's director thinks Juncker does not need a Chief Scientific Adviser

03.12.2014

Heard by the European Parliament's Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, Bernhard Url, EFSA's director, said that the EU had "enough scientific capability around [...] without a chief scientific adviser".
Food

EFSA's credibility loopholes

20.11.2014

An analysis of the revised independence policy of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). More reworded than revised, actually.
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