World Food Safety Day, June 7, 2023

It’s often said that there is no “I” in the word “team,” and we also note that there is no “I” in “World Food Safety Day.”

IOFI wants to spend a few minutes acknowledging the work of the scientific, technical, and regulatory teams within our member companies, member associations, and our association. These teams and their members devote much of their professional life to ensuring that flavorings and the finished foods containing them are safe and beneficial to society. Just a few elements that we’d like to highlight:

Our Regulatory Affairs and Advocacy Committee works tirelessly to promote harmonized standards for flavor safety and the understanding of the safe use of flavors.

• the members of the Committee set aside their “company hats” to work as a team—addresses unique regulatory challenges worldwide.
• Working to ensure appropriate and helpful outreach and service to regulatory bodies helps all of us—and helps make our food supply safe.

Our Science Board reacts to new scientific developments related to flavor safety. It works to forge new methods to ensure that we understand how best to consider the safety of flavorings in finished foods.

• The Science Board responds to scientific and technical regulatory requests, ensuring that experts within governmental bodies worldwide have the data they need to affirm that flavorings are safe.
• Regularly oversees metabolism, genotoxicity and toxicity studies that are used to respond to regulatory requests.
• Proactively conducts studies and identifies new scientific methods to ensure that our industry clearly understands the future of flavor safety assessments, ensuring that we are prepared to address new challenges in a changing world.

Our Codex/JECFA Task Force includes company experts and IOFI staff members.

• The Task Force prepares for and participates in the Codex Committee for Food Additives (CCFA) meetings—essentially participating as part of an even larger “team” of countries and observers from around the world to create harmonized international standards to ensure our food supplies are safe.
• Our science and regulatory staff members within the Task Force prepare submissions for flavoring substances to be reviewed by JECFA; this ensures that the use of flavorings is considered by international experts, further increasing consumer and regulatory confidence in the safety of food ingredients.

IOFI—and all of the teams that are part of IOFI—are doing our small part to work towards a future where every day is World Food Safety Day.