Contribution of European research to risk analysis

The European Commission's, Quality of Life Research Programme, Key Action 1—Health, Food & Nutrition is mission-oriented and aims, amongst other things, at providing a healthy, safe and high-quality food supply leading to reinforced consumer confidence in the safety of European food. Its objectives also include the enhancing of the competitiveness of the European food supply. Key Action 1 is currently supporting a number of different types of European collaborative projects in the area of risk analysis. The objectives of these projects range from the development and validation of prevention strategies including the reduction of consumers risks; development and validation of new modelling approaches; harmonization of risk assessment principles, methodologies, and terminology; standardization of methods and systems used for the safety evaluation of transgenic food; providing of tools for the evaluation of human viral contamination of shellfish and quality control; new methodologies for assessing the potential of unintended effects of genetically modified (genetically modified) foods; development of a risk assessment model for Cryptosporidium parvum related to the food and water industries; to the development of a communication platform for genetically modified organism, producers, retailers, regulatory authorities and consumer groups to improve safety assessment procedures, risk management strategies and risk communication; development and validation of new methods for safety testing of transgenic food; evaluation of the safety and efficacy of iron supplementation in pregnant women; evaluation of the potential cancer-preventing activity of pro- and pre-biotic ('synbiotic') combinations in human volunteers. An overview of these projects is presented here.