The European Commission's, Quality of Life Research Programme, Key Action 1
- Health, Food & Nutrition is mission-oriented and aims, amongst other thi
ngs, at providing a healthy, safe and high-quality food supply leading to r
einforced consumer confidence in the safety of European food. Its objective
s also include the enhancing of the competitiveness of the European food su
pply. Key Action 1 is currently supporting a number of different types of E
uropean collaborative projects in the area of risk analysis. The objectives
of these projects range from the development and validation of prevention
strategies including the reduction of consumers risks; development and vali
dation of new modelling approaches; harmonization of risk assessment princi
ples, methodologies, and terminology; standardization of methods and system
s used for the safety evaluation of transgenic food; providing of tools for
the evaluation of human viral contamination of shellfish and quality contr
ol; new methodologies for assessing the potential of unintended effects of
genetically modified (genetically modified) foods; development of a risk as
sessment model for Cryptosporidium parvum related to the food and water ind
ustries; to the development of a communication platform for genetically mod
ified organism, producers, retailers, regulatory authorities and consumer g
roups to improve safety assessment procedures, risk management strategies a
nd risk communication; development and validation of new methods for safety
testing of transgenic food; evaluation of the safety and efficacy of iron
supplementation in pregnant women; evaluation of the potential cancer-preve
nting activity of pro- and pre-biotic (`synbiotic') combinations in human v
olunteers. An overview of these projects is presented here.