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Food contact materials are all materials and articles intended to come directly or indirectly into contact with food. Before being included in the positive European 'Union list' of authorized substances (monomers, other starting substances and additives) for plastic food contact materials, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) must assess their safety 'in use'. If relevant for risk, the safety of the main impurities, reaction and degradation products originating from the manufacturing process is also evaluated. Information on genotoxicity is always required irrespective of the extent of migration and the resulting human exposure, in view of the theoretical lack of threshold for genotoxic events. The 2008 EFSA approach, requiring the testing of food contact materials in three in vitro mutagenicity tests, though still acceptable, is now superseded by the 2011 EFSA Scientific Committee's recommendation for only two complementary tests including a bacterial gene mutation test and an in vitro micronucleus test, to detect two main genetic endpoints (i.e., gene mutations and chromosome aberrations). Follow-up of in vitro positive results depends on the type of genetic effect and on the substance's systemic availability. In this study, we provide an analysis of the data on genotoxicity testing gathered by EFSA on food contact materials for the period 1992-2015. We also illustrate practical examples of the approaches that EFSA took when evaluating 'non standard' food contact chemicals (e.g., polymeric additives, oligomer or other reaction mixtures, and nanosubstances). Additionally, EFSA's experience gained from using non testing methods and/or future possibilities in this area are discussed. Environ. Mol. Mutagen. 58:361-374, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) carried out a public consultation to receive input from the scientific community and all interested parties on the genotoxicity assessment of chemical mixtures. The draft statement was prepared by a dedicated working group of the Scientific Committee and endorsed by the Scientific Committee for public consultation at its 89th plenary meeting of 28‐29 May 2018. The public consultation for this document was open from 26 June until 9 September 2018. EFSA received 73 comments from 16 interested parties. EFSA's Scientific Committee wishes to thank all stakeholders for their contributions. This report presents statistics on the comments received and provides a summarised description of how the comments were addressed in the finalisation of the document. The stakeholders valuable and detailed comments were taken into account by the Scientific Committee to prepare an updated version of the statement on genotoxicity assessment of mixtures. The statement was discussed and adopted at the Scientific Committee plenary meeting on 22 November 2018, and is published in the EFSA Journal. This publication is linked to the following EFSA Journal article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2019.5519/full [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]