Emerging Food Safety Risks

Supplement for paying subscribers

This post explores emerging food safety risks described by the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) in a 2023 report. The report has a global perspective and contains insights from a network of national experts in emerging risk identification from European countries and agencies, the World Health Organisation, Food Standards Australia New Zealand, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and the US Food and Drug Administration.

I consider many of the ‘emerging’ risks listed by the EFSA to be not directly applicable to food safety practices and protocols. In addition, a significant number of risks considered by the expert network but which were not ultimately designated ‘emerging’ are nevertheless of interest to food safety practitioners.

In this post, I classify the risks discussed by the EFSA expert network according to their usefulness to current food safety knowledge - classifications which are absent from the EFSA report.

Classification of “food safety” risks discussed by the EFSA expert panel (Graphic by author)

I have classified the risks as:

• Direct food safety risk (emerging)

• Direct food safety risk (not enough information)

• Direct food safety risk (deemed not ‘emerging’)

• Veterinarian or agricultural issue

• Nutrition/diet-related risks

In addition, I list a selection of potential issues which were raised by the expert network, but not discussed by the network, and which may be of interest to food safety professionals.