Contribution of European research to risk analysis

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.