Call for input data for the Exposure Assessment of Food Enzymes - 11th Call
11th Call: Input data for the Exposure Assessment of Food Enzymes Food processes
Food process
- Tea Processing as well as Herbal and Fruit Infusions Processing
This call considers tea and infusion and one type of plant extracts. Feedback is sought, particularly on what type of tea or herbal/fruit infusion may be treated with enzymes during their manufacturing process.
Plant extracts presented special challenge, as they can be extracted with water or organic solvents. In this call-for-data, EFSA considered only aqueous tea or plant extracts. Other types of extracts such as essential oils are excluded here and will be considered in a future call.
Instruction for completing the attached MS Excel ® file
Sheet 1 contains a legend for the information given in Sheet 2.
EFSA is seeking your feedback on the information listed in the Excel file concerning the FoodEx categories (column B), and the associated technical factors for tea as well as herbal and fruit infusions processing (column D–F).
1. For FoodEx categories (column B), should any food group be excluded? Or are there any food groups missing from the list?
In column H, please indicate ‘Remove’ for food groups to be excluded, and list any additionally proposed food groups with the corresponding FoodEx category at the end of this column.
2. You attention is drawn also to one additional questions at the bottom of sheet 2.
The FoodEx categories are available in the FoodEx list (Sheet 3).
3. In columns D–F, the average technical conversion factors (f1) and the average recipe fractions (f2) and the percentage of FoodEx category containing the ingredient (f3) mainly derived from the EFSA RPC Model[1] and open information sources are listed.
Average technical conversion factors (f1) were calculated by considering:
- f1 - for tea leaves as enzyme-treated ingredient = 1: for the present call-for-data, it was assumed the enzyme solution was used directly on dry tea leaves and during the fermentation step of black tea production.
- f1 - for tea extract as enzyme-treated ingredient = 38.3: for the present call-for-data, it was assumed that starting from 66 grams of dry tea leaves, during a water extraction (2L) process, 1.722 grams of tea extract are obtained. Therefore, to obtain 1kg of tea extract, 38.3kg of dry tea leaves are needed.[2]
If you do not agree with any of the listed technical factors, keeping in mind that there can be some variation between foods in each category, please propose an alternative average factor for the respective FoodEx category in column I-K.
For transparency purposes, please provide a short text using columns L-O to justify any feedback given. Any references should be provided in the last column.
Submission of data
Data should be submitted directly to EFSA using the dedicated e-mail address for this service: fip [at] efsa.europa.eu (fip[at]efsa[dot]europa[dot]eu). This mailbox is also the contact point for any technical support/advice you need for the reporting of this data.
[1] EFSA (European Food Safety Authority), Dujardin B and Kirwan L,2019.Technical report on the raw primary commodity (RPC) model: strengthening EFSA’s capacity to assess dietary exposure at different levels of the food chain, from raw primary commodities to foods as consumed. EFSA supporting publication 2019:EN-1532. 30pp. doi:10.2903/sp.efsa.2019.EN-1532
[2] EP1472932B1: Process for producing green tea polyphenol