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Agri-food stakeholders call for EFSA overhaul

Thousands of industry stakeholders have co-signed an open letter calling on the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to speed up improvements to its risk assessment processes to secure EU competitiveness and support innovation.

The open letter – co-signed by more than 30 organisations, representing thousands of food and feed producers and ingredient suppliers along the agri-food chain – calls on the European Commission (EC) and EFSA to carefully consider several critical challenges facing the EU food and feed industries.

It highlighted inconsistent processes, slow timelines, and lack of innovation readiness as key concerns under EFSA's current structure, noting that these issues stifle competitiveness and are driving companies out of the EU market, creating important “negative economic repercussions” for the region.

'Urgent action' needed from EFSA

Co-signatories of the open letter called on EU policymakers to streamline risk assessment, reduce administrative burdens, and foster true scientific dialogue within EFSA, stating that innovation and industry viability depends on it.

“Ensuring the continued development of innovative agri-food products necessitating a safety assessment for authorisation within the EU requires urgent action. We therefore call on the Commission and EFSA to speed up the delivery of EFSA's performance evaluation and to give full consideration to the challenges highlighted in this letter,” they wrote.

The EC is currently conducting its first-ever performance evaluation of EFSA – due to be repeated every five years with first findings set to be shared by March 2026 – in a move that has already been described as a “unique opportunity” for change.

Processes, guidance, and science

The letter highlighted several processes, including the Transparency Regulation (TR) procedure, as creating a “significantly increased administrative burden” for applicants and stakeholders.

Signatories said these should be streamlined and refined to align with EU priorities on competitiveness, innovation, and strategic autonomy.

The letter also highlighted that there are too many complex guidance documents that add “limited value to the safety evaluation process”, including the General Pre-Submission Advice (GPSA) and Renewal Pre-Submission Advice (RSPA).

These, the authors suggested, should be replaced with clear guidance documents that have been reviewed by industry experts, to provide “meaningful and case-specific guidance”.

Third, they said the current EFSA structure means that scientific panels and working groups lack expertise on feed and food technology and agri-food law legislation, and argued that this should be reviewed with the intention of incorporating experts with hands-on experience in these areas.

Beyond this, the open letter said that, too often, “extensive additional data requests” were made during safety assessments applications under EFSA and there remained “limited integration” of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) – non-animal testing and alternative methodologies that are important for future advances in industry.

EU faces ‘significant regulatory challenges’

Speaking to Ingredients Network, EU regulatory expert Luca Bucchini, owner and MD of Hylobates Consulting, said the open letter pushed the attention of policymakers “in the right direction”.

It also very clearly outlines changes that could be made under EFSA's ongoing performance evaluation – an action Bucchini previously said made “absolute sense”.

“In the EU, we face significant regulatory challenges,” he said, adding: “And much of it is just because of the sluggishness of the process, the lack of pre-submission advice, and so on.”

While EFSA has come a long way in establishing itself as a respected scientific body on the global stage, Bucchini said “serious issues” remained with some regulations and processes and, because of this, the authority's credibility with industry was absolutely “not as strong as it should be”.

“Perhaps EFSA has been too focused on the demands of member states' authorities and of European politicians, and less on its place in the food world,” he said, adding that these should focus on “delivering the best science-based advice which protects consumers so that the European food economy can thrive”.