In January 2018 the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published guidance on uncertainty analysis in scientific assessments for its expert scientific panels, staff and partners in EU member states to apply in their work for EFSA. Taking account of the uncertainties will increase the transparency and robustness of EFSA’s scientific advice. Since the beginning of this approach, communicating uncertainties to different audiences was considered a critical step.
Risk communication is a core task for EFSA and effective communication of uncertainties to its partners and stakeholders – including the general public – is considered vital to this role. Clear, mutually understood expressions of risk and the related uncertainties are essential for effective communication of scientific advice. While developing its guidance on uncertainty analysis in its scientific assessment, EFSA determined to develop practical guidance for risk communicators on how to communicate the results of uncertainty analysis. The draft guidance presents a structured approach to uncertainty communication in the food safety area. It consists of advice on how to develop messages on the probability of assessment conclusions (given the uncertainties), what tools to use to support such messages and what strategies to follow for effective uncertainty communication.
At the Symposium we will present the draft guidance and outline the draft recommendations. We will explain how the guidance was developed: a structured literature review was cross-checked with existing frameworks from other scientific advisory bodies and research bodies (including the Winton Centre’s contemporaneous work). Also, findings from EFSA target audience research – a focus group study involving European food safety risk managers, assessors, NGOs, food operators and the general public; and an online survey carried out in six languages and eight EU countries – were included. Expertise in social sciences and practical application to examples of EFSA’s assessments were then used to develop a body of structured recommendations and best practice advice, which was tested by applying it to a set of example assessments.
EFSA is publicly consulting on this draft guidance at the time of the SRA-E 2018 conference and therefore this presentation will help to explain the work and elicit further feedback from the interested conference participants. EFSA will implement the approach in its communications from 2019 onwards.