Six new European scientific projects on risks associated with food

These tailor-made activities are designed to meet specific scientific needs and priorities identified by EFSA and certain Member States. Set up in 2023, this initiative relies on the EFSA national focal points. As the national focal point for France, ANSES is playing a central role by liaising between EFSA and the national players concerned. The Agency is coordinating two of the six projects recently selected. These are being carried out in partnership with other competent organisations, including the Joint Laboratory Service (SCL) and INRAE in France.

A project to better identify the risk of botulism

Coordinated by Caroline Lemaréchal, a scientist at ANSES's Ploufragan-Plouzané-Niort Laboratory, the project entitled "One Health approach to investigate Botulinum neurotoxin-producing bacteria contamination levels from farm to fork" will collect data on the prevalence of botulinum neurotoxin-producing bacteria according to a One Health operational approach. It involves institutes from 11 different countries.

Botulism is a severe disease that causes paralysis in humans and animals, and can sometimes be fatal. There has been a reduction in the use of additives in food, some of which – such as nitrates and nitrites – are intended to prevent the growth of botulinum toxin-producing bacteria. At the same time, the increase in the production of canned foods via short supply chains and failures to comply with hygiene rules for their preparation and storage are increasing the risk of these bacteria developing. These various factors were behind the botulism outbreaks that occurred in France in 2023 and 2024, and could lead to an increase in cases of human botulism. Furthermore, a new botulinum toxin was recently discovered, associated with cases in both humans and animals.

The aim of the project is to develop a harmonised protocol common to all the partners (which does not currently exist), to enable the detection of botulinum toxin-producing bacteria.

In the second phase of the project, samples will be collected in the various partner countries from livestock, soil and foods at the marketing stage. The harmonised protocol will then be used to detect botulinum toxin-producing bacteria. The data collected will help with the development of new strategies designed to anticipate and eliminate the risk of botulism, or reduce it to acceptable levels.

Use of artificial intelligence to analyse food safety data

The other project coordinated by ANSES, "Analysis of Large Language Models for automatic FoodEx2 codification", aims to use generative artificial intelligence to optimise the analysis and use of data on food-related health and nutritional risks. It is being led by Chris Roth, head of the Methodology and Studies Unit at ANSES, and involves organisations from five different countries.

The use of generative AI would for example make it easier to cross-reference databases on food contamination or nutritional composition with those on consumption. EFSA has created a system called FoodEx2 to standardise data on food. However, coding food data in this system is time-consuming for the various Member States that send their data to EFSA.

The aim of the project is therefore to develop a generic methodology for automating this coding. After it has compared the various existing models in terms of their cost, protection of data confidentiality and understanding of food-related texts, the scientific team plans to develop a methodology for adapting the selected model(s) to the specific features of the FoodEx2 nomenclature. Tests will then be carried out with food data written in the different languages of the project partners.

Contribution to other projects

ANSES is also participating in four other projects. These are focusing on:

• the assessment of microbiological risks of plant-based dairy and meat substitutes (project coordinated by Ireland),
• improved outbreak investigation, preparedness and sharing of whole genome sequences within the European Union and strengthened collaboration between Member States (project coordinated by Denmark),
• monitoring and assessing the impact that the introduction of teosinte, an invasive weed, would have on maize cultivation in the European Union (project coordinated by Spain),
• the formulation of technical and functional recommendations to EFSA on the development of a new data ingestion and management process within the European agency (project coordinated by Sweden and Italy).

These six new projects are in addition to four others still in progress, and a further five that have been completed.