Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Probabilistic risk/exposure assessment to chemicals vs sustainability ...
Highlights
Coordinator
Standard protocols (ISO), whole genome sequencing (WGS), computational methodologies, and MetaOmic approaches (metagenomics, metatrascriptomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, culturomics and phenomics) will be applied for the identification and characterization of the new and (re)-emerging chemical and biological hazards in traditional products, related to climate changes, microbial evolution, and modifications in the manufacturing processes. Omics techniques will also be applied to study factors affecting the survival and the stress resistance mechanisms of pathogens and antimicrobial resistant (AMR) bacteria during food processing and shelf life. In addition, a CAD-based automatic feature recognition procedure will be developed for hygienic design of food machinery, as a prerequisite for GMP in food production.
MetaOmics and MultiOmics approaches will be used for the identification and quantification of toxic compounds in novel sources or ingredients, also to anticipate risks related to novel foods and new sustainable food processes. The culture collection from task 3.1.1 will be used for challenge experiments in pilot plants mimicking industrial manufacturing. Food toxicants in new ingredients and food processing technologies will be evaluated (in connection with Spoke 2). Allergenicity (also with computational approaches) and toxicity will be considered by in vitro and in vivo tests. Exposure assessment and risk- benefit assessment (RBA) of novel foods will be performed.
RA of food toxicants (M30)
Chemical safety of food in EU is nowadays assessed by using deterministic approaches in which consumption data and toxicity data are considered for their mean values. Such an approach does not take in account either the more fragile fractions of the population or the highest consumers of specific food items. The transition towards a fully probabilistic approach may offer a robust and reliable solution to this issue, by combining through Monte Carlo simulation technique the distribution of consumption of specific food items and the distribution of toxicity data. Furthermore, due to sustainability issues the consumption scenario is moving from animal-based to plant-based products making it compulsory to assess the impact of this shift both in toxicological and nutritional terms.
In this scenario results from the exposure assessment may also be used for the creation of alternative exposure scenarios, based on the simulation of changes in the diet in collaboration with other OnFoods Spokes. To such an extent an innovative risk-to-benefit tool could be developed in order to adequately weight the levels of risk against their sustainability.
The proposal will involve the following steps:
1. Definition of contamination data of different categories of regulated and unregulated contaminants (PoPs, heavy metals, fungal toxins, algal toxins…) in animal and plant-based products, using EFSA assessment as prioritization criteria.
2. Adoption of most recent consumption data bases.
3. Creation of probabilistic models by use of dedicated probabilistic software’s (@Risk, Christal ball…).
4. Creation of a risk-benefit model, including nutrients and contaminants intake, based on DALYs calculation.
5. Weighting risk data vs sustainability.
The activity will provide an overview of the contaminant distribution in selected food. In addition, the probabilistic exposure and risk assessment for different classes of pollutants will be performed and provided to public health agencies and relevant stakeholders. Risk-benefit assessment of alternative dietary models in relation to changes proposed by other OnFoods Spokes, will be also obtained providing guidance for product development and further policies.
