Assessing Risks of Chemicals in Foods with Limited Scientific Information
An important study was released this month by the Institute of Food Technologists addressing the challenge of responding to food contamination with limited scientific information. Ricardo Carvajal at Hyman, Phelps & McNamara wrote about this on the FDALawBlog last week. You can read the summary by Rosetta L. Newsome here.
Ms. Newsome summarizes the three main sections of the study as follows:
First Section:
“details the U.S. legal framework that provides the foundation for U.S. food safety policy,
describes international considerations (e.g., Codex standards) that impact foods in international commerce, and addresses European Union law and standards.”
Second Section:
“briefly addresses structure activity relationships, surrogate compounds and metabolites,
predictions based on physical/chemical data, toxicological evaluation, use of animal studies, statistical considerations, and other aspects of risk assessment.”
Third Section:
“addresses why a new approach is needed to conduct a risk-based evaluation of the potential exposure, hazard, and toxicity of low levels of unwanted chemical substances in foods and how information on risk can be used to make appropriately conservative and balanced decisions[;] . . . also calls attention to the importance of evaluating benefits of the food(s) in which the component is found as well as risks.”
http://www.foodliabilitylaw.com/admin/trackback/147252
