Food and feed safety vulnerabilities in a circular economy

Published:
Deadline:
Expired

About the project

This two-year project, running in 2021-2022, aims to identify emerging risks to food and feed safety and the environment in the transition to a circular economy in a holistic and integrated fashion.

This will ensure that food and feed safety as well as environmental health considerations are incorporated at an early stage of research or policy initiatives linked to recycling and the circular economy.

The need for a comprehensive network of partners and stakeholders

The involvement of stakeholders throughout the project iskey to identify challenges for future risk assessments and explore possible synergies, opportunities, conflicts and trade-offs between environmental and food safety policies, objectives and actions.

EFSA will engage this network through various activities (workshops, events, consultations, etc.) inter alia to:

  • Steer the evolution of the project.
  • Support the identification of challenges for food and feed safety risk assessment and the prioritisation of knowledge gaps, policy needs, country-specific issues, vulnerabilities.
  • Identify best practices on how to integrate food safety and environmental initiatives.
  • Design principles and strategies to ensure consistency and integration between overarching policy agendas and sectoral policies for environment and food/feed safety.
  • Design and implement participatory foresight activities for future circular economy practices.
  • Make recommendations (data, method, technology, policy, collaboration, outreach needs).

Who we are looking for and how you can apply

For this network, EFSA aimed to attract a wide variety of organisations, including:

  • From Europe and beyond.
  • From across the food value chain/system.
  • Farmers, businesses, NGOs, consumers, academia and research, public institutions, etc.
  • Those with expertise in human/animal/plant health and/or the environment and climate.

The call remained open until end of April 2022. EFSA reserves the right to subsequently contact individual stakeholders as needed for specific participatory activities as deemed appropriate.

Upcoming and past engagement activities on circular economy

1 - Extensive literature search and first stakeholder workshop (29 October 2021)

In August 2020, EFSA published a call for procurement where the Harper Adams University was selected to carry out an extensive literature search and monitor on-going research projects with the aim to map existing circular economy practices, gather information and evaluate the evidence for vulnerabilities of circular economy for food/feed safety, plant and animal and human health.

The initial identification and categorization of CE practices relevant for the food and feed chain and the resulting emerging risks led to two conclusions:

  • The amount and breadth of circular economy practices imposed the need for prioritizing the domain on which EFSA should focus on for the next steps of the project,
  • Additional sources of information were needed, as scientific literature only takes stock of existing practices but does not shed light on future drivers.

Based on the above, EFSA decided to narrow the original scope of the project and focus on the identification and characterization of risks from novel feed sources and technologies in the framework of circular economy.

The preliminary findings of the extensive literature search were presented to stakeholders in a dedicated workshop on 29 October 2021, which marked the first step in the foresight participatory process.

2 - Foresight and emerging risk identification workshop (9-10 June 2022)

On 9 and 10 June 2022, EFSA will hold a foresight workshop to focus on the identification of key drivers and potential emerging risks related to circular economy practices within the domain of novel sources of feed, and notably: food waste, former food products and food processing by-products.

The goal of the event is to collect input on specific sources of novel feed within the three source categories prioritised by EFSA and drivers leading to their use in the future, and to identify potential risks associated to these sources. In this way, EFSA will expand the horizon and build a longer-term perspective.

The event will bring together policymakers, stakeholders and practitioners, scientists and researchers to tackle the issue using a multidisciplinary approach.

The event announcement and registration are now available on our EFSA website.

Emerging risks