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To enhance the resilience of food systems to food safety risks, it is vitally important for national authorities and international organizations to be able to identify emerging food safety risks and to provide early warning signals in a timely manner. This review provides an overview of existing and experimental applications of artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and internet of things as part of early warning and emerging risk identification tools and methods in the food safety domain. There is an ongoing rapid development of systems fed by numerous, real-time, and diverse data with the aim of early warning and identification of emerging food safety risks. The suitability of big data and AI to support such systems is illustrated by two cases in which climate change drives the emergence of risks, namely, harmful algal blooms affecting seafood and fungal growth and mycotoxin formation in crops. Automation and machine learning are crucial for the development of future real-time food safety risk early warning systems. Although these developments increase the feasibility and effectiveness of prospective early warning and emerging risk identification tools, their implementation may prove challenging, particularly for low- and middle-income countries due to low connectivity and data availability. It is advocated to overcome these challenges by improving the capability and capacity of national authorities, as well as by enhancing their collaboration with the private sector and international organizations.

This dataset contains the codebooks, code references, and code items for the Netherlands and United Kingdom citizens' juries on new plant breeding techniques. The main folders 01_NLJury_Codes & codebook and 02_UKJury_Codes contain the data for the Netherlands and United Kingdom citizens' juries and the codebook respectively. The juries were four days long and each main folder has four sub-folder which contains the code references and code items for each day of the citizens' jury. Both the main folders also contain a Word document that provides the codebooks for the respective citizens' jury.

Many developments in the bioeconomy depend on the use of genetically modified microorganisms (GMMs). GMMs are used in bioreactors to convert biomass into food, feed, and energy products. The recent judgment by the Court of Justice of the European Union on gene editing technologies has affected the use of GMMs. A heated debate has started on whether and under what circumstances GMMs should be considered genetically modified organisms. This kind of decision is extremely relevant, as it will have a strong effect on the innovation of sustainable supply chains in the bioeconomy. The question has been raised as to whether the regulatory policies on GMMs can be justified from a sustainability perspective and, in particular, whether they do not endanger the European Green Deal, the flagship policy strategy of the new European Commission under Ursula von der Leyen. This contribution will first provide an overview of GMMs and their importance for the development of the bioeconomy, followed by a theoretical framework for assessing investments in GMMs. The third part of the article includes a discussion of four scenarios for regulating GMMs in the future, derived from the EU legal environment. The potential implications of the scenarios are assessed by linking them with the benefits and costs of investments in GMMs, following a modified version of the model presented in Purnhagen and Wesseler (2019). The results show that reforms based on the current EU legal environment do not look very promising to further support the use of GMMs. This has important implications for reaching the objectives of the Green Deal, as more radical legal changes are needed for the success of the initiative.

COGEM has commissioned a research project to obtain insight in the possibilities that gene-editing may offer for the development of abiotic stress tolerant crops. Genetically modified abiotic stress tolerant crops were also included in the research project. The project was carried out by Wageningen University & Research and Wageningen Food Safety Research.The results indicate that most of the effort is put into obtaining drought tolerant crops, followed by crops tolerant to salinity or heat. Worldwide there are a few genetically modified abiotic stress tolerant crops that have been authorised for cultivation. Several genetically modified abiotic stress tolerant crops have been tested in the field.There are only a few examples of gene edited abiotic stress tolerant crops. Results from extensive field testing with these gene edited crops have not been published yet.According to the researchers abiotic stress tolerant crops could be developed faster and more efficient using gene editing. With gene editing gene expression may be changed in a more subtle way, which might allow the development of crops that only express the genes which confer abiotic stress tolerance under stressful conditions. In addition, gene editing may be used to change several genes simultaneously, which may allow signaling routes that play a role in abiotic stress tolerance to be altered in a more balanced way thereby reducing the occurrence of unwanted negative side effects.

CRISPR-Cas-based genome editing allows for precise and targeted genetic modification of plants. Nevertheless, unintended off-target edits can arise that might confer risks when present in gene-edited food crops. Through an extensive literature review we gathered information on CRISPR-Cas off-target edits in plants. Most observed off-target changes were small insertions or deletions (1-22 bp) or nucleotide substitutions, and large deletions (>100 bp) were rare. One study detected the insertion of vector-derived DNA sequences, which is important considering the risk assessment of gene-edited plants. Off-target sites had few mismatches (1-3 nt) with the target sequence and were mainly located in protein-coding regions, often in target gene homologues. Off-targets edits were predominantly detected via biased analysis of predicted off-target sites instead of unbiased genome-wide analysis. CRISPR-Cas-edited plants showed lower off-target mutation frequencies than conventionally bred plants. This Review can aid discussions on the relevance of evaluating off-target modifications for risk assessment of CRISPR-Cas-edited plants.

Contamination of African staple foods is a major issue for human and animal health, nutrition, and trade. This review aimed to collect and synthesize the available evidence on geographical spread, scale of contamination, disease burden, economic impact, and mitigation measures for aflatoxins in Africa by way of a systematic literature review. This knowledge can enhance management strategies for the major challenges to combat aflatoxins. The search was conducted by applying a predefined search strategy, using bibliographic databases and websites, covering the period 2010 to 2018. Results showed that maize, peanuts, and animal feeds were the most studied commodities. For maize, all studies indicated mean AFB1 to exceed the European Union legal limit. From studies on contamination levels and biomarkers, it is clear that overall exposure is high, leading to a substantial increase in long-term disease burden. In addition, concentrations in food occasionally can reach very high levels, causing acute aflatoxicoses. The trade-related impact of aflatoxin contamination was mainly evaluated from the standpoint of aflatoxin regulation affecting products imported from Africa. There was a limited number of studies on health-related economic impacts, pointing out a gap in peer-reviewed literature. A number of mitigation measures have been developed, but proof of cost-effectiveness or even costs alone of the practices is often lacking. We recommend more emphasis to be put in peer-reviewed studies on evidence-based cost-effective mitigation strategies for aflatoxins, on the scale and spread of the problem and its impacts on public health and economics for use in evidence-based policies.

Genetically modified crops have been grown commercially for more than two decades. Some of these crops have been modified with genetic constructs that induce gene silencing through RNA interference (RNAi). The targets for this silencing action are genes, either specific endogenous ones of the host plant or those of particular pests or pathogens infesting these plants.Recently emerging new genetic tools enable precise DNA edits with the same silencing effect and have also increased our knowledge and insights into the mechanisms of RNAi. For the assessment of the safety of foodstuffs from crops modified with RNAi, internationally harmonized principles for risk assessment of foods derived from genetically modified crops can be fol-lowed. Special considerations may apply to the newly expressed silencing RNA molecules, such as their possible uptake by consumers and interference with expression of host genes, which, however, would need to overcome many barriers. Bioinformatics tools aid the prediction of possible interference by a given RNA molecule with the expression of genes with homologous sequences in the host crop and in other organisms, or possible off-target edits in gene-edited crops.

Background: In the last decades, food produced by aquaculture has seen an impressive increase worldwide but maintaining high quality and safety is increasingly becoming a concern. It is apparent that changes in- and outside the aquaculture supply chain may act as driving forces for the introduction of food safety hazards. Knowledge on these drivers of change and their impact in the various steps in the food supply chain may help food producers to mitigate to potential risks and maintain high-quality food. Scope and approach: In this study, we analysed the use of expert driven methodologies to assess and predict the effect of drivers of change on selected food/feed safety vulnerabilities in the salmon aquaculture supply chain of Norway. The presented overview is based on the findings of the “Aquarius” project, which was funded by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Key findings and conclusions: In this study, over 100 experts were involved and various expert elicitation methods were applied such as on-line questionnaires, interviews, Delphi and Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA). This approach resulted in a comprehensive overview of the Norwegian salmon supply chain. For each step in the supply chain, vulnerabilities for human and animal health were identified, which were prioritised by FMEA. For the two highest-ranked vulnerabilities in each step of the supply chain, drivers were identified and prioritised by expert elicitation in a Delphi study. Also, indicators and linked data sources were obtained for the highest-ranked drivers. The comprehensive information collected was integrated in a Bayesian Network (BN) model that links data sources for indicators and drivers of change. The applicability of the BN model was demonstrated for salmon health for four vulnerabilities and three steps in Atlantic salmon aquaculture. The accuracy of developed model was 81%.

In 2012, a controversial study on the long-term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and the glyphosate-tolerant genetically modified (GM) maize NK603 was published. The EC-funded G-TwYST research consortium tested the potential subchronic and chronic toxicity as well as the carcinogenicity of the glyphosate-resistant genetically modified maize NK603 by performing two 90-day feeding trials, one with GM maize inclusion rates of 11 and 33% and one with inclusion rates of up to 50%, as well as a 2-year feeding trial with inclusion rates of 11 and 33% in male and female Wistar Han RCC rats by taking into account OECD Guidelines for the testing of chemicals and EFSA recommendations on the safety testing of whole-food/feed in laboratory animals. In all three trials, the NK603 maize, untreated and treated once with Roundup during its cultivation, and the conventional counterpart were tested. Differences between each test group and the control group were evaluated. Equivalence was assessed by comparing the observed difference to differences between non-GM reference groups in previous studies. In case of significant differences, whether the effects were dose-related and/or accompanied by changes in related parameters including histopathological findings was evaluated. It is concluded that no adverse effects related to the feeding of the NK603 maize cultivated with or without Roundup for up to 2 years were observed. Based on the outcome of the subchronic and combined chronic toxicity/carcinogenicity studies, recommendations on the scientific justification and added value of long-term feeding trials in the GM plant risk assessment process are presented.