Ad hoc meeting with EFSA’s stakeholders following the public consultation on the draft opinion on protein safety in GMOs
On 4 June 2025, EFSA held an online ad-hoc meeting with interested food business representatives on EFSA GMO Panel’s “Draft scientific opinion on current practice, challenges, and future opportunities in the safety assessment of newly expressed proteins in genetically modified plants”. The draft opinion underwent a public consultation process from mid-January 2025 to mid-March 2025.
In line with its commitment to engaging with stakeholders and enhancing understanding of its work, EFSA invited the organisations that submitted comments during the public consultation period to a follow-up meeting to clarify the submitted comments. Organisations from Member States, industry representatives, NGOs, consulting groups and academia, attended the meeting.
EFSA delivered a presentation with an introduction to the topic and the participants presented the main content of the comments submitted during the public consultation. Additional follow-up clarifications and discussions were exchanged during the Q&A sessions.
At closure, EFSA thanked all participants for their valuable contributions and for their availability to attend the meeting. There was broad consensus on the relevance of the EFSA GMO Panel’s scientific opinion and the importance of integrating new tools and methodologies more effectively into the risk assessment process.
Additional points raised highlighted the need to strengthen validation steps, continue discussions on the role of exposure assessment, and consider future challenges related to potential combinatorial effects.
As a way forward, participants reinforced the prioritisation of activities starting with the concept of History of Safe Use (HoSU), followed by the development of best practices for the use of bioinformatic analyses. The experience gained from previous risk assessments, together with ongoing scientific advancements, underlines the need to modernise current standards for protein safety assessment.