EFSA Seeks External Experts to Review the Quality of Its Scientific Outputs

The call seeks to find scientific experts to help EFSA assess whether best practices are followed in the development of its scientific outputs. The experts will examine in particular the quality of practices used for collecting, evaluating and describing the scientific data.

Oct 21 2010 --- Committed to the continuous enhancement of its scientific work, the European Food Safety Authority will organise the second external review of the quality of its scientific outputs. In order to benefit from an external perspective on its scientific work, EFSA has launched a call to extend the list of experts who have not been involved in the development of its scientific outputs during the last two years and would be willing to participate in this evaluation. The final deadline for submitting an application to be included in this list of external experts is 15 December 2010.

The call seeks to find scientific experts to help EFSA assess whether best practices are followed in the development of its scientific outputs. The experts will examine in particular the quality of practices used for collecting, evaluating and describing the scientific data. They will assess whether conclusions and recommendations made in the outputs were adequately supported by scientific evidence and how any uncertainties were addressed. The experts will also consider whether the terms of reference were properly adhered to in the scientific outputs and in their conclusions.

The selected external experts will be included in an External Review Working Group and a reserve list will be created. The Working Group will cover the following areas of activity: chemical risk assessment; nutrition and novel foods; biological risk assessment and zoonoses data collection; animal health and welfare; plant health; GMOs; risk assessment methodologies and emerging risks.

In 2007, EFSA proposed a review system to help assess the quality of its scientific activities. The system involves: 1) a self review, during the development of outputs; 2) an internal review by senior scientific and communications staff at EFSA; 3) an external review by high-level independent external experts. This is EFSA’s second call for scientific experts to expand the reserve list of the External Review Working Group, which is part of its quality assurance programme. The first call took place in April 2009.