Food Additives Intake Model (FAIM): comments received from stakeholders and EFSA’s views

The Food Additives Intake Model (FAIM) was developed by EFSA to support applicants in the estimation of exposure to a food additive and to harmonise the submission of the related data. FAIM is based on food consumption data from the EFSA Comprehensive European Food Consumption Database. Following the development of the EFSA Food Additives Intake Model (FAIM), EFSA presented the FAIM tool to interested parties i.e. Members States, the European Commission and key industry stakeholders, in order to collect their feedback prior to its publication. During this exercise, all comments received were considered and addressed. The current report expresses EFSA’s views on comments provided by the interested parties, including those provided by industry after a four-week consultation period, which came as a follow up of the EFSA “Stakeholders Workshop on guidance for submission for food additive evaluations”, organised on 21 September 2012 in Brussels. In addition, it briefly provides a description of the model, its scope and applications and discusses limitations and uncertainties in exposure estimates resulting from its use. Finally, recommendations for further development of the FAIM tool and its applications are presented.