European farmers and food producer warn the European Food Safety Agency in a letter addressed to its Executive Director, Bernhard Url. The signatories express strong concerns about the inadequate updated Guidance on the scientific requirements for an application for authorisation of a novel food in the context of Regulation (EU) 2015/2283, recently published by EFSA.

According to the signatories, the update does not meet the requests expressed by 17 European agricultural ministers last January in a note (no. 5469/24), which recalls that the founding principle of food safety must be considered crucial in the best interests of the European citizens and consumers. The specific request of ministers to align some aspects of the evaluation of food produced in laboratories with the evaluation procedures of medicines has been completely disregarded. In particular, the request to include “pre-clinical and clinical studies to be used as criteria for assessing the safety of lab-grown products ” was neglected.

Furthermore, the EFSA updated Guidance does not take into account the European Parliament’s report on the European Protein Strategy, which highlights the ethical, social, environmental and economic challenges”  posed by “cell-based foods, which isproduced by culturing cells isolated from plants and animals”, and stresses that “the Novel Food Regulation is not fit for purpose” to address these challenges.

EFSA has also ignored the concerns of the scientific world, expressed in the framework of the public consultation,  regarding hormones, growth factors and antimicrobial residues.

In light of these heavy shortcomings, the signatory organisations ask EFSA to review its work on updating the guidance, taking into account these formal requests. The organizations announce a mobilization and call for the blocking of all authorization procedures for cell-based products until the requests made in the ministers’ note and the position expressed by the European Parliament are duly taken into account.

The signatories are confident EFSA will be willing to approach these genuine concerns and are looking forward to its answer.