Call for input data for the Exposure Assessment of Food Enzymes - 7th Call

7th Call : Input data for the Exposure Assessment of Food Enzymes

Food processes

• Lactose degradation in milk and dairy processing

The Comprehensive Food Consumption Database currently does not provide sufficient details to identify consumers for dairy products with reduced lactose content. Nowadays lactose-reduced products are widely available in the market. The selection of food categories was therefore based on the assumption that consumption of lactose-reduced products is similar to dairy products in general. An exception, however, was made for cheese and yoghurts, which are often naturally lactose-reduced or even lactose-free. Therefore, a correction factor (f3) has been assigned to these groups to reflect the proportion of foods within these two food categories that are likely to have been treated with a food enzyme to degrade lactose.

Feedback is also sought on what type of food categories containing whey that is co-produced from the production of lactose-reduced milk and lactose-reduced milk powder, and in particular please specify whether lactose-reduced whey and/or lactose-reduced milk are used in the production of infant formulae and follow-on formulae.

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 lactose degradation 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 three 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 Model¹ and open information sources are listed.

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. 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-153