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Hello, my name is Tobin,
I am a microbiologist,
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and today I am going
to talk to you about
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the work that EFSA is
doing in the area of
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“Emerging Risks”.
So what are emerging risks?
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Well, emerging risks are new or future
hazards that may occur
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in the food chain and cause potential
health problems.
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When I say hazards, what I
mean is chemicals or
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micro-organisms such as
bacteria and viruses.
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We are also interested
in re-emerging risks.
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These are hazards, chemicals, micro-
organisms, with which we are already
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familiar but for which new information
has come to light.
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Now an example of new
information could
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be a change in the exposure
to these particular hazards.
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Now this could come about
through finding the
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hazard in a different
part of the food chain.
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An example of this
would be bacteria that
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we are used to seeing
in meat and meat products
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suddenly appearing
in fresh fruit and vegetables
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and that we would call
a re-emerging risk.
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Now the reason that we
are doing this work is anticipation.
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What we want to do is to try to
anticipate new issues,
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food safety issues,
that could occur.
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And we do this through two
different activities.
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First of these is monitoring information,
so typically the scientific literature,
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but also the surveillance programs
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that already take place
across Europe.
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One of the types of data that we are
interested in is trade data.
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And here we would like to know
what types of food commodities
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are being traded in
what sorts of volumes.
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Second activity is talking to experts. To
do this we have two particular networks.
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The first network consists of
representatives of Food Safety Authorities
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from across Europe and
the European Commission,
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and the second network,
what we call ourstakeholders network,
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consists of representatives
from the food industry,
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from across whole food chain,
from Farm-to-Fork,
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and also consumer associations.
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And through these means
we want to identify
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new Food and Safety
issues in order to be prepared.
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And what we can do to be prepared?
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Well, what we want to do
is to increase our understanding
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of these new issues, and
we can do this through
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stimulating research
or specific monitoring
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programmes for those
issues we have identified.
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The aim for all of
this is prevention.
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This we can carry out through EFSA
providing the Risk Manager,
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in this case the European Commission,
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with meaningful information
to enable them to prioritise what
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preventative activities that
they can put in place
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to ensure that
those issues that
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we have identified do not become
future food safety crises.
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