As part of EFSA’s commitment to transparency, identifying and characterising uncertainties and explaining their implications for assessment conclusions are significant elements of EFSA’s scientific assessment process.
EFSA published a draft guidance document (GD) on how to assess uncertainty in scientific assessments in March 2016 after public consultation (EFSA, 2016). The GD is applicable to all areas of EFSA, all types of scientific assessment and all types of uncertainty affecting scientific assessment. It does not prescribe specific methods for uncertainty analysis but rather provides a harmonised and flexible framework within which different methods may be selected, according to the needs of each assessment.
To test its applicability EFSA started a 1 year trial phase on its draft GD in April 2016.
The GD was tested by 10 different panels with 13 different case studies. At the end of the testing phase: (a) a survey on the impact assessment of the implementation of the GD in EFSA’s assessments was administered to the 10 working groups; (b) a workshop in June 2017 to share the results of the trial brought together from each case study the EFSA scientific coordinator, working group external experts who worked on the case studies and DG SANTE risk managers involved (EFSA, 2017).
Results from the survey provided preliminary indications on the time and resources required for implementing uncertainty analysis, the value added to risk assessment and the potential wider consequences for stakeholders.
In total, 72 participants, both risk assessors and risk managers, attended the EFSA workshop on uncertainty. Benefits and challenges from the case studies were discussed at the workshop and they will be illustrated in this session in more detail. At least 3 case studies from the animal, plant and food safety area will be presented to show how uncertainty analysis has been applied.
The trial offered the opportunity to test the applicability of the approaches proposed in the GD and to produce recommendations for streamlining the final version of the document (EFSA, 2018). Addressing uncertainty in the case studies was a challenging exercise that required an additional effort in terms of time and resources but proved to be useful to enhance transparency of EFSA scientific assessment and its scientific value.