A new report from EFSA ’s partners in the NAMs4NANO project proposes a system to promote New Approach Methodologies (NAM) to assess the potential food safety risks of nanoparticles.
NAMs refer to a wide variety of methods for testing and evaluating chemicals that do not use experiments on animals or humans .
In addition to gradually replacing animal testing, these methods can help improve safety assessments by using models that better simulate conditions in humans.
NAMs can be performed in test tubes, culture plates, or using software.
NAM-based approaches offer great potential for assessing the safety of nanotechnology , as in many cases traditional methods cannot be easily adapted to address nanoscale risks.
In particular, their use in the early stages of a risk assessment minimizes the need for further animal studies.
Advances in science and technology are spurring a flood of these approaches , yet few of them have been validated to international standards for use in regulatory risk assessments.
NAMs4NANO Proposal
The proposal details a general framework for a qualifications system .
This includes:
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the general process,
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the evaluation criteria,
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the description of the test method and procedures for describing the NAM setup,
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its application
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the evaluation phase.
It also addresses scientific validity : how to demonstrate its reliability and relevance to a specific context of use.
EFSA's partners
The report was prepared by experts from EFSA’s partners: the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the French Agency for Food, Environment and Occupational Health and Safety, the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, the Belgian Institute for Health – Sciensano, the Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, the University of Amsterdam, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, and Wageningen Food Safety Research, part of Wageningen University and Research.
The BfR coordinated the project and provides further information on their website: NAMs - more than just alternatives to animal testing