Risk-benefit assessment of foods: lessons learned from a capacity building experience under the RiskBenefit4EU Project

Introduction: Risk-benefit assessment of foods (RBA) has emerged recently to estimate the overall impact of food, food ingredients and diets on human health. Significant methodological progress has been made and its value is now recognized to support the decision-making process in public health to prevent food-associated diseases and promote wellbeing in populations. Purpose: At this time, few research groups have experience in RBA. RiskBenefit4EU project (RB4EU) was funded by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to promote and disseminate the use of RBA by developing a harmonized RBA framework. The presentation will introduce the strategy developed to capacitate a new team to perform an RBA of foods and lessons learned from this experience. Methods: Activities of the capacity building experience were designed by experienced researchers in RBA to transfer methodologies to a new multidisciplinary team comprised of experts in risk assessment in toxicology, microbiology or nutrition, epidemiology, dietary assessment or data analysis. Results: Short courses were organized in two weeks of training, using a learning-by-doing process, to: i) build a common language within the team by harmonizing important concepts: hazard, health effect, adverse health effect, beneficial health effect, risk, benefit, health and health impact; ii) learn basics used in RBA, including risk assessment in toxicology, microbiology, and nutrition, epidemiology, data analysis, modeling, statistics and uncertainty analysis; iii) become familiar with the stepwise RBA approach with the explanation of key steps that were illustrated with RBA examples previously performed; iv) initiate an RBA case study, performed by the new RBA team, to practice and answer a specific public health question. Significance: The RB4EU project organized the first training in RBA. The strategy developed, with the materials and method used, can now be re-used to capacitate other new teams in RBA and can be considered as a robust basis to build on.“RiskBenefit4EU – Partnering to strengthen the risk-benefit assessment within EU using a holistic approach” funded by EFSA (GA/EFSA/AFSCO/2017/01 – GA02). The authors declare that this study reflects only the authors’ view and EFSA is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.N/