Episode 38 – Up to speed: How food risk assessment is changing

00:00

Nikolaus Kriz

I always take two examples. One is this apple. I won't say which apple it is. It's actually my favourite apple. So yes, like everybody, I have a favourite apple. I know where it's from, I know its name, I know where it's grown and what the background is, and I know also how many plant protection products on average have been sprayed on there, and I expect it to be safe.

At the same time, here I have a medicine I need to take every day to stay alive. That's my particular health condition. I know the name of this medicine because I'm a vet. I know what is in this medicine and I know what it does, but other than that, I have no emotional connection to this.

00:51

Edward Bray

Welcome to another episode of Science on the Menu. My name is Ed Bray, and today we've got a unique perspective on food in Europe, and that's going to come from the Executive Director of the European Food Safety Authority, Nik Kriz. Welcome to the podcast, Nik.

01:07

Nik

Thank you very much, Ed. Great to be here.

01:10

Ed

We're going to talk about science and trust in science, and we're going to be talking about your priorities as well. Before we get onto that, let's find out more about you, Nik, as a person, okay?

You were a vet, you're an Austrian. How has that shaped you? And what perspective do you bring to your role now?

01:29

Nik

You refer to me being a vet. I think what shaped me there and my approach to doing things, is that as a vet, I was 24 at the time when I graduated and I moved into private practice, you are in this unique position that you need to take decisions, and you have to live with the consequences, and that is also something that is very challenging because nowadays you think of young people, they come, many of them, into a safe environment where they are guided, where they are mentored, etc., but the classic thing, think about James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small, you are out there, you're in the middle of nowhere, you're facing a cow that is about to give birth but has difficulty doing that. Are you going to do a caesarean? Are you not going to do a caesarean? That's your decision to make and you have to live with the consequences. Very early on I learned to make decisions, and that's certainly something that has guided me throughout my professional life.

Something that is a deep belief in me that you need to come to a decision, because not making a decision is also a decision, and usually the worst one.

02:44

Ed

Right. Well, what would happen in a vet's case, if you don't take a decision?

02:47

Nik

Basically, if the cow, in this particular case, cannot give birth, the cow and the calf would die. So, you need to make the decision, and the decision is how to best get that calf out. First you try it conservatively, up the back side so to speak, and pull it out. Or you try it surgically on the side and that's certainly something that also has defined how I approach things that you always need to think about the timing that you have to do things, because when you're a surgeon, like I used to be, it's about not only that you do the best possible surgery, but that you do it in as short a time as possible. And that's a compromise where you need to find the right, for the animal, for the outcome, you need to find the right result, and that's also something that has defined me.

Think about two weeks ago where we had the infant formula case. EFSA made a fast risk assessment on the acute reference dose that needed to be fast. Maybe we could have done an even better job if we had taken a year's time with all the different aspects, taking into account even more studies, but that would have been too late. It was here now. It needed to be done within a week. It was done in less than a week. We provided the risk manager with an acute reference dose, which is what was needed to make sure that the infant formulas on the market, the right ones, stayed on the market and the ones that could pose a risk came off the market.

So, speed and excellence together, but it is a compromise between the two because not always can you achieve both to the same level.

04:45

Ed

Tell us about the strengths and weaknesses that you see of our food safety system in Europe, and what are some of the challenges that you're going to tackle?

04:53

Nik

Well, first of all, let's put it this way. We have a very mature and a very safe food system in Europe. We have one of the best, if not the best food safety system in the EU. Our food is safe. That's a clear message that should be remembered. Does that mean we are perfect? Does that mean we can't do better? Not at all. Because of course, we can do things better.

What can we do better? One of the things from a food safety perspective now is that we can be more supportive towards innovation and competitiveness. We see a danger that Europe, also in the area of food, of agriculture, could fall behind. And it's a clear priority of the European Commission to say, let's be more friendly towards innovation, supportive, enabling of innovation and also competitiveness, so that the EU stays at the forefront of EU food safety and world food safety, so to speak, because our food safety is also something that is being exported.

Our opinions, our risk assessments, are something that the rest of the world looks to because of the excellence that we deliver it with and the independence that we deliver it with, which is so much part of our DNA. But of course, also we need to make sure that it's done in time.

06:25

Ed

Do you feel this even more, being in a country like Italy, where food is at the centre of people's lives?

06:30

Nik

Yes, I think this is something I certainly learned and experienced coming to Italy, the importance of food compared to other countries that I've lived in. I have to say that. It's really something that has an extra special importance here, and an extra emotional aspect. And if you allow me, I always take this time to sort of say when we compare the work we do to other agencies’ work, for example.

I always take two examples. One is this apple. I won't say which apple it is. It's actually my favourite apple. So yes, like everybody, I have a favourite apple. I know where it's from, I know its name, I know where it's grown and what the background is, and I know also how many plant protection products on average have been sprayed on there, and I expect it to be safe.  

At the same time, here I have a medicine I need to take every day to stay alive. That's my particular health condition. I know the name of this medicine because I'm a vet. I know what is in this medicine and I know what it does, but other than that, I have no emotional connection to this.

I take it every day. I'm very reminded by my smartwatch every day to take it, and it even comes with a warning from the doctor and a whole package leaflet that tells me what can go wrong when I take too much of this medicine, but even what side effects I could have when I take this medicine. I think this is very important.

You eat an apple, you don't expect this to come with a package leaflet. You eat an apple, you expect it to be safe. So, that's a completely different setup to medicines, where you say, look, there's a risk benefit assessment that is being done to get this onto the market, and that risk benefit assessment should also be done at speed, because if you're somebody that needs a medicine, you want it now. You can't wait for three years, five years. Whereas whether we have another food additive or not might not be the same urgency. Therefore, here we lean on the side of caution. It's a very much a precautionary principle, but that doesn't mean we should be slow. The set up should be that within the given times that we have, we provide a risk assessment and provide that risk assessment that adds value to the consumers, to the citizens out there. Having said that, we as a European Food Safety Authority, have this big, and that's where this apple is, I think, a very good picture, this big ask and also mission to make sure that once we produce a risk assessment, it's as independent and as fit for purpose or excellent as we can do it within the time provided. A long answer, but important for me because it explains a little bit how unique and emotional, because we came from the emotion, the environment is in which we operate, because everybody has an opinion about food. Not everybody has an opinion about medicines, chemicals, etc.

10:01

Ed

You've mentioned speed many times, and I think we can move nicely into your priorities, and clearly speed is one of your top priorities coming in. What are some of your other priorities for your role?

10:12

Yeah, and you say my priority - I should explain that it's not only my priority, is the priority of the European Parliament, of the European Commission, that says, please continue to provide us independent scientific advice, but do it faster. Why faster? Because we have a backlog of questions. We have a stock of questions that clearly show we are not as fast as we can be. If we have a stock of questions, we always call it, that is about a year, then we have a good turnover, but at the moment we have a two year stock of questions, which means we need to work on that.

So, that's where that comes from. But let's be clear, another one is to stay relevant. For me, as an Executive Director, looking forward, the most important thing is also that when I leave, we will be as relevant as we are today. We just had an external evaluation. We will see it by quarter three this year, but indications are that the European food safety system and the European Food Safety Authority within it, works well, is needed, provides added value into the system.

How do I make sure that we continue to do that? Part of that is staying abreast of innovation. So, innovation is my second priority. And then looking especially in the current climate, beyond what EFSA can do, it's about joining forces. Why joining forces? Because of course we have national food safety authorities. There are some of them as big, some even bigger than we are ourselves, and if there's one weakness in the system, I think that we have not linked up and joined forces as much as we still can do. There are historical reasons, there's the way the EU is set up for that, but that's something I want to focus on so that by the end of my tenure, you can really see a much more hub and spoke approach, a networked approach to food safety within the European Union.

12:18

Ed

So, what would that look like with a request for a safety assessment to EFSA? How practically would you go about that in terms of joining forces with other bodies that are out there?

12:28

Nik

There are other national authorities which can do that job. They can do their job just as well as we can, as long as we have a system within our panel system, which we do, then that risk assessment gets a final signoff. Then that can happen faster because they can do the job for us. Remember, that also goes to the history, EFSA was set up in order to be, and that's why it was also called an authority, not an agency, in order to be very independent of everybody. It had an effect. It had the effect that we were also isolated and a bit insulated, and part of that was intentional, but part of that led to distance, which we are now trying to bridge with what we call interdependencies. Yes, we still have the independent final say about this opinion, about the scientific advice, about this risk assessment, but we use and collaborate and join forces with the very excellent experts that we also have in the Member States, not only as our experts, that's already happening, but also as there are experts, their staff that then work for us.

13:45

Ed

Tell me a bit more about the innovation aspect. It's a common criticism that you hear of public institutions. They’re slow, they're bureaucratic, they're not keeping pace. But innovation also needs to be embedded in an organisation in terms of the tools that it uses, in terms of the methodologies that it works on. Do you have some examples of innovation in practice? What are some of the areas that that you're looking at?

14:13

Yeah, I think there we need to again, and it's the most difficult thing, talk about a change in culture or an amendment of the culture. Of course, the culture of a regulatory agency tends to be risk averse. Let's take what is out there. Let's look at it and examine it and then apply it once it's proven safe.

Innovation, by its very nature, is actually something where you need to be encouraged to make mistakes, and it is okay to make mistakes. Now, as a regulatory agency that has in its name “food safety”, we need to be very careful how we apply that, but what we do do is that, in our methodology, we, for example, look at how can we use artificial intelligence and how can we apply it.

We have something called AutoCAT, which is part of a distiller software. The details are not that important. What is important is, that it's a way, a method and a tool, that helps us identify relevant evidence in all the studies that are out there. You can imagine when you have 20.000, 30.000 studies for a particular subject, it helps, but we still validate it at the moment.

There's still the human validation, because also we want to make sure that before we fully trust a tool like that, we can rely on it. And that's what we're doing with AutoCAT. That's what we're doing with other applications which we fund with our grant and procurement system, where we fund, let's call it, tests of this wonderful predictability tool, which AI can be, where we test that in our environment, and that needs to continue, because the only way forward to help us with the increasing amount of data that is out there is to test that and to make the most use of it and best use of it.

16:22

Ed

This leads me onto our final topic, which is trust in science and a provocative question maybe: is there a danger that the risks involved with going with artificial intelligence, etc., that there's a risk of losing trust of citizens? We expect a food safety body to get everything right, not to fail if you like, not to try things. Is trust at stake with how you approach this?  

16: 53

Nik

Well, how much do you increase your trust - let me answer a question with a question - when you say, “I can do this risk assessment perfectly, but I will give it to you in ten years.”

That doesn't increase trust either. That's where modern tools, innovation, applying them in order - and yes, it brings in speed again - in order to stay relevant. There's an old joke for surgeons, is that the one person that knows everything is the pathologist, but he's too late. So, you need to provide that risk assessment also at the right time in order to regain trust. I come back to infant formula. I'm sure that EFSA’s reputation and value and therefore the trust in EFSA was strengthened by us providing - and I thank all the colleagues - I want to say it here also, that did that, that they went out of their way to get that done within less than a week, a risk assessment, in order to have this acute reference dose, which helps that increases trust, not to say we can do that, but we deliver it in a year.

And for me, trust, what we know from the Eurobarometer, we also have the social science aspect, what we see is that science organisations are trusted. There's actually an increase in the trust in science organisations. So, of course, that doesn't mean we can rest on our laurels. It means that's what we continue to need to earn. Sometimes colleagues misunderstand me when I keep on about, we need to continue to earn trust. It means that trust is so easily eroded. We just need to think of Dieselgate and it's so hard to build, and the moment that you start to rest on the trust and think, that's it, we have it, is the moment you start eroding your own, the trust that you have, because our role as a food safety authority is with all our risk assessment to prove that we add value by keeping food safe in Europe.

It's as simple as that. You know, our favourite saying, if it's not safe, it's not food.

19:01

Ed

I think that nicely wraps up the discussion. Maybe I can ask you another question just to bring this back to you, your daily work, to give us an insight into what it looks like being at the head of an EU food safety body. Tell us some of the things you're working on right now.

19:22

Nik

So, something very sort of concrete. Tomorrow I go to Rome to sign a memorandum of understanding with the FAO, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. So, that's something where we want to work closer with them. It took some time. Finally, we have a memorandum of understanding so we can share more of our risk assessments, the data behind it, etc.

So, that's something very concrete, more long term, which is much more, also my role, it is number one, that we develop a strategy that goes up to 2034, because our strategy comes to an end at the end of 2027. So, we need to be ready. How are we going to set the organisation up for the years to come after that?

That's one thing. Another thing is if the EFSA conference 2027, we have 25 years next year, we should also celebrate that and use it to present our strategy. It will be in autumn. It will be in Parma, it will be here where we have spent so many years, and it will look forward, but that's something that needs planning and needs the prioritisation of the Executive Director.

There are many more things, such as strengthening of EFSA, where we are currently in discussions with the European Commission, whether we can add posts in order to strengthen the areas that the new Biotech and Omnibus Act are also pointing out, such as in our Pre-Submission advice, etc. So, all these things go towards keeping EFSA at the forefront of food safety and relevant over the next decade.

21:06

Ed

Maybe that means we could get you back, Nik, and we could hear how things have been going at that point and get you back on the podcast.

21:11

Nik

Yes! I certainly hope so.

21:15

Ed

Well, I think that wraps things up. Thanks very much for joining us, Nik.

21:21

Nik

Thank you.

21:22

Ed

Thanks to our listeners. Please check out our previous episodes of Science on the Menu wherever you find your podcasts, and we'll see you again soon on Science on the Menu. But for now, that's all, goodbye!