Food Safety Council, Scientific Committee

Food Safety Council, Scientific Committee, Quantitative risk assessment, in, Proposed System for Food. Safety, Assesament 1978, Food and Cosmetics Toxicology.16. Supplement 2, 109-136. 

Food Safety Council Scientific Committee (1978). FdCosm. Tox., 16, (Supplement 2), 17-23. 

Krewski and Van Ryzin (40) examined the extrapolation characteristics of six of the more cbmmonly used dose-response models. They applied these models to 20 sets of toxic response data that were taken from the Report of the Scientific Committee of the Food Safety Council (15,16). The toxic responses were both carcinogenic and noncarcTnogenic in nature. Of the 19 data sets having... 

The Effects of Populations of Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation," National Acaden of Sciences, 1980. Scientific Committee, Food Safety Council. Food and Cosmetic Tox. 1978, 16 supplement 2, 1-136. 

The relatively turbulent discussions of food safety in the last generation led some of the leaders in the food industry to form the Food Safety Council, with a Board of Trustees drawn from both public and private sources, to generate and propose a system of safety assessment that might serve as a nucleus around which to crystallize a system of general applicability. It formed a Scientific Committee to generate the scientific component of this system, and the work of this committee is the basis of this chapter. 

This then leads to the question, is there a better way The Scientific Committee of the Food Safety Council addressed this question and decided that a better approach is risk assessment, carried out by extrapolating the dose/response curve to low doses. 

The traditional method, used widely in nutrition, pharmacology, and toxicology, is to assume the equivalence between species of doses expressed as milligrams of test substance per kilogram of body weight. This method was adhered to by the Scientific Committee of the Food Safety Council and is implicit also in the traditional safety factor approach. 

Scientific Committee, Food Safety Council Proposed System for Food Safety Assessment Food Cosmetic Toxicol. 16, Supplement 2, 1-136(1978). 

Scientific Committee, Food Safety Council Genetic Toxicology Food Cosmetic Toxicology 18, 683-710 Quantitative Risk Assessment, ibid. 711-734(1980). 

Scientific Committee Food Safety Council, Proposed system for food safety assessment. Food Cosmet. Toxicol, 16, 1, 1978. 

Scientific Committee, Food Safety Council. (1978). Subchronic Toxicity Studies. In "Proposed System for Food Safety Assessment". Fd Cosmet. Toxicol. Suppl. 2, 16 83-96. 

In a document entitled Proposed System for Food Safety Assessment , the Scientific Committee of the Food Safety Council (35) has attempted to delineate the steps by which decisions on safety or toxicity are arrived at. What is interesting about this approach is the departure from the traditional sequence of tests... 

A recent comprehensive reference to extrapolation models can be found in the Food Safety Council s Final Report of the Scientific Committee, published June 1980. 

The National Research Council Committee states that attempts to assess food safety based solely on the process are scientifically unjustified. Rather than adding a general label about the process with which a plant variety was developed, it would make more sense to label food so that consumers are informed about what is actually in or on the food. But this, too, is not necessarily helpful. For some people it may be informative to read a label that says, may contain traces of carbamate pesticides, which at high concentrations are known to cause death of animals or may contain trace amounts of purified Bacillus thuringiensis protein, which kill Leptidoptera (a class of insects). But is it helpful to most consumers who are not familiar with the science ... 

In a Communication to the Council and European Parliament on Consumer Health and Food Safety [COM(97) 183 Fin of 30 April 1997], the European Commission emphasised that high-quality scientific committees are an essential foundation for consumer health and safety in this area. 

This committee is presided over by the Minister of Health. It is comprised of the Director General of the Institute of Healthcare, the French agency for French health products and the French agency for health safety of foods, as well as the president of the scientific council and its two agencies and the Institute of Healthcare. It meets once a quarter or as requested by members. 

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