Open call for food additive occurrence data in food and beverages intended for human consumption
Background
Regulation (EC) No 1331/2008 establishes a common procedure for the assessment and authorisation of food additives, which shall be subject to a safety evaluation by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) before they are permitted for use in the European Union.
Under Regulation (EU) No 257/2010, food additives already permitted for use in the European Union before 20 January 2009 must be kept under continuous observation and must be re-evaluated by EFSA. The Regulation also provides for food additives to be re-evaluated whenever necessary in the light of changing conditions of use and new scientific information.
This call for data is an open call and will be launched annually. However, it does not anticipate the yearly work programme of the Food Additives and Flavourings (FAF) Panel.
Submission of data
National food authorities, research institutions, academia, food business operators and other stakeholders are invited to submit analytical data on food additives. The full list of food additives that can be reported and their corresponding codes are published with this call in the file ‘Food_Additives_PARAM.xlsx’.
How to submit data
Data must be submitted in electronic format (XML) to the EFSA Data Collection Framework (DCF) https://dcf.efsa.europa.eu/dcf-war/dc. User credentials are required to access the DCF web interface, please contact data.collection [at] efsa.europa.eu (data[dot]collection[at]efsa[dot]europa[dot]eu) to obtain the credentials.
EFSA will only accept data in SSD2 (Standard Sample Description version 2) format. In case data are compiled manually using the EFSA tools available at https://zenodo.org/record/3941939#.YCKRnzGSnIU, the XML file must be generated for direct submission to the DCF. A short video describing how to send data to EFSA is available here. The guidance ‘Chemical monitoring reporting Guidance: 2021 data collection’ should also be consulted for reporting requirements and is available at https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/supporting/pub/en-6420
The annual major release of the catalogues (31/01/2021) and SSD2 structural metadata can be downloaded from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.779880 Guidance on the installation and use of the EFSA Catalogue browser can be found at http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/supporting/pub/en-1726
The DCF will open for the 2021 chemical monitoring data collection, which also includes food additives, from 15 April 2021 to 1 October 2021.
The communication below is not applicable to Member State competent authorities.
Please note that all confidentiality requests pursuant to EFSA’s Practical Arrangements must be submitted separately via the Portalino, a tool developed and managed by EFSA (https://confportal.efsa.europa.eu/) at the time of submitting the data to EFSA via the DCF (Data Collection Framework). For further information, please consult the quick guide available here.
Failure to submit a confidentiality request via the Portalino will prevent EFSA from assessing the confidentiality request. As a consequence, all data submitted to EFSA will be made proactively available to the public without delay by EFSA.
Contact details
Please address any technical enquiries regarding the reporting of data to data.collection [at] efsa.europa.eu (data[dot]collection[at]efsa[dot]europa[dot]eu)
(last update: 21 June 2021)