European Food Safety Authority EFSA) Survey on climate change and emerging risks for food safety including plant and animal health CLEFSA)

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is launching until the 7th of March 2018 a survey on climate change and emerging risks for food safety, including plant and animal health. Your inputs are very precious as they will feed a new method for identifying, ranking and prioritizing emerging risks in the EU for food/feed safety, as well as plant and animal health, potentially related to climate change.

The issues identified by EFSA so far are the following ones: - Occurrence of ciguatoxic fish in European marine waters - More frequent and more intense cyanobacteria blooms - Increased occurrence of beta-Methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA) producing cyanobacteria, diatoms and dynoflagellates - Increased potential for growth of marine bacteria producing tetrodotoxins - Increased norovirus contamination of coastal waters - Increased risk of contamination of mycotoxins in maize, wheat and rice - Increased area of potential establishment and spread of Bemisia tabaci and the viruses it transmits - Northwards expansion of wild boar (reservoir of pathogens such as the African Swine Fever virus).

The questionnaire is published on-line here. It will not take more than 10 minutes of your time to complete and could greatly help to increase the profile of emerging risk in plant health. We count on your contribution!