The main goal of the training programme is to disseminate best practices for the implementation of principles and methods of food chain risk assessment, improving knowledge of this complex area of work and ensuring consistent and high implementation standards across the European Union.

The programme will be implemented in 2 phases, each of 16 training sessions*, of which:

COURSE 1: Chemical risk assessment in food

• 2 training sessions
• Addressed to officials of the EU Member States, Candidate Countries, EEA/EFTA countries. The training is open to trainees coming from the risk assessment field, with a specific focus on chemical risk assessment.

COURSE 2: Microbiological risk assessment

• 2 training sessions
• Addressed to officials of the EU Member States, Candidate Countries, EEA/EFTA countries. The training is open to trainees coming from the risk assessment field, with a specific focus on microbiological risk assessment.

COURSE 3: Plant and pest protection risk assessment

• 2 training sessions
• Addressed to officials of the EU Member States, Candidate Countries, EEA/EFTA countries. The training is open to trainees coming from the risk assessment field, with a specific focus on plant and pest protection risk assessment.

COURSE 4: Risk assessment in nutrition

• 2 training sessions
• Addressed to officials of the EU Member States, Candidate Countries, EEA/EFTA countries. The training is open to trainees coming from the risk assessment field, with a specific focus on risk assessment in nutrition.

COURSE 5: Risk assessment in biotechnology

• 2 training sessions
• Addressed to officials of the EU Member States, Candidate Countries, EEA/EFTA countries. The training is open to trainees coming from the risk assessment field, with a specific focus on risk assessment in biotechnology.

COURSE 6: Risk assessment applied to animal health and animal welfare

• 2 training sessions
• Addressed to officials of the EU Member States, Candidate Countries, EEA/EFTA countries. The training is open to trainees coming from the risk assessment field, with a specific focus on risk assessment applied to animal health and welfare.

COURSE 7: Environmental risk assessment

• 2 training sessions
• Addressed to officials of the EU Member States, Candidate Countries, EEA/EFTA countries. The training is open to trainees coming from the risk assessment field, with a specific focus on environmental risk assessment.

COURSE 8: Evidence collection, management and integration

• 2 training sessions
• Addressed to officials of the EU Member States, Candidate Countries, EEA/EFTA countries. The training is open to trainees coming from the risk assessment field, with a specific focus on evidence collection, management and integration and, preferably, to rainees already attending the present BTSF training courses on risk assessment and/or trainees who have already attended the previous BTSF editions on risk assessment.

*Number of sessions may be modified following outbreak of COVID-19 pandemics.

COURSE 1: Chemical risk assessment in food

• Introduction to chemical risk assessment (different steps, chemical risk assessment at national and at international level, approaches in different areas of food and feed safety, problem formulation, routes of exposure, differences between types of chemicals in food and feed, fate and behaviour of chemical contaminants) and its legal framework
• Hazard Identification and Characterization
  • Basic concepts in toxicology
  • Basic knowledge of different endpoints in toxicity studies
  • Chemicals in foods
  • Collection of consumption data
  • Collection of chemical occurrence data
  • Challenge of connecting consumption data with chemical occurrence data
• Short introduction to Risk Communication.

COURSE 2: Microbiological risk assessment

• Introduction to microbiological risk assessment (EU and international regulatory framework, basic steps in microbiological risk assessment
• Introduction to microbiological risk assessment (different steps, microbiological risk assessment at national and at international level, approaches in different areas of food and feed safety, problem formulation, routes of exposure) and its legal framework
• Hazard Identification
• Hazard Characterization
• Exposure assessment
• Risk Characterization
• Risk management aspects specifically related to microbiological risk assessment and other related issues
• Short introduction to Risk Communication

COURSE 3: Plant and pest protection risk assessment

• Introduction to plant pest risk assessment (different steps, pest risk assessment at national and at international level) and its legal framework
• Data requirements for plant pest risk assessment
• The different steps in plant pest risk assessment
• Short introduction to Risk Communication

COURSE 4: Risk assessment in nutrition

• The specificities of risk assessment in nutrition, i.e. assessed and managed either at the level of nutrients and/or at the level of foods, and its legal framework
• The risk assessment model in nutrition: concepts, terminologies and methods
• The specificities and challenges of nutrient risk assessment
• Dietary intake assessment
• Risk assessment of novel foods (Regulation 2015/2283)
• Integrated risk-benefit assessment of food and nutrition
• Short introduction to Risk Communication

COURSE 5: Risk assessment in biotechnology

• Introduction to risk assessment in GMOs with a focus on GM plants (scope of GMO applications based on newly expressed proteins and newer biotechnologies such as RNAi, appropriate statistical principles and methods for the comparative analysis of food/feed) and its legal framework
• Explanation of new breeding techniques such as cisgenesis, intragenesis genome editing, synthetic biology, gene drive
• The principles and methods of hazard identification and characterization when applied to whole food/feed
• The exposure assessment in the context of the evaluation of food and feed derived from GM plants
• Risk characterisation, including uncertainty analysis
• Risk mitigation (risk management)
• Post-market monitoring on a case-by-case basis
• The rationale and methodology of the environmental risk assessment (ERA) of GMOs
• The two approaches of post-market environmental monitoring: case-specific monitoring (of identified risks) and general surveillance (of unidentified risks)
• Synthetic biology
• Omics in risk assessment
• Short introduction to Risk Communication

COURSE 6: Risk assessment applied to animal health and animal welfare

• Introduction to risk assessment for animal welfare (different steps, risk assessment at national and at international level, approaches in different areas of animal welfare (husbandry, transport, and slaughter), problem formulation, exposure scenarios)
• Four steps of RA in animal welfare. What makes RA for Animal Welfare unique
• Risk management aspects specifically related to animal welfare risk assessment
• Introduction to import risk assessment (IRA) in the field of animal health (different steps, import risk assessment, risk assessment at national and at international level) and its legal framework, examples of risk assessments for animal health
• Data requirements for IRA in the field of animal health
• Identification of appropriate risk management options in animal health risk assessment
• Short introduction to Risk Communication

COURSE 7: Environmental risk assessment

• Introduction on environmental risk assessment (ERA) under the various EU legislation. The course will explain the basics of how to conduct ERA
• Different aspects of the environment and environmental compartments
• Problem formulation
• Selection of non-target organisms for risk assessment
• Environmental exposure assessment
• Life-stage analysis
• Short introduction to Risk Communication

COURSE 8: Evidence collection, management and integration

• Systematic review
• Problem formulation
• Weight of the evidence
• Biological relevance
• Evidence integration
• Uncertainty analysis
• Expert knowledge Elicitation
• Risk Communication and crisis Communication

Target participants

The present training will, through the adoption of a practical approach, aim to enhance knowledge of Competent Authorities and scientists from public institutions and national authorities involved in food chain risk assessment in order to increase the level of expertise and harmonisation. To facilitate this, invited countries will be requested to select on the specific training sessions officials coming from the risk assessment field.

Dissemination

The BTSF programme is based on the “train the trainers” approach, and for this reason dissemination of the received knowledge is fundamental for the trainings to have a greater impact. Participants will be requested to commit themselves to disseminate the information received via different methods, i.e. informing colleagues about the information received at the training, distributing the training materials, preparing informative articles in the professional national or, if possible, in international journals, preparing presentations based on the training materials for the staff of national Competent Authorities or other disseminating methods which could be appropriate to share the information received via the BTSF training. During the course participants will be provided with a training package to be used as supporting dissemination material.