New Developments in Food Safety Assessment: Innovations in Food Allergy and Toxicological Safety Assessment

Food preferably has to be tasteful, healthy, attractive, and affordable, but should above all be safe. The safety of our daily food nowadays is at a reasonable level, but is far from obvious. With a certain frequency, food safety incidents come up, and the increasing complexity and globalization of our food production networks contribute to an easy outgrow of such incidents to international crises. There is an increased food demand due to a growing world population, whereas existing food sources are limited. To meet the increasing food demand, industry continues developing new ingredients, sources, and products like novel protein-based products (e.g., insect-derived food proteins); extracts from fruits, vegetables, and herbs; natural fragrances; and flavorings but also introduces new processing methods and innovative food packaging concepts. Furthermore, new food concepts are under development in an attempt to reduce the health burden due to overweight and other (related) western food-related conditions or to specifically treat or prevent foodrelated diseases such as food allergy. Finally, our current food is still found to pose natural or process-induced hazards, sometimes newly discovered (e.g., acrylamide several years ago), and not seldom its safety is jeopardized due to malpractice such as fraud. During the past half century, food risk assessment and risk management approaches have developed, particularly with respect to microbiological and chemical safety aspects of food and food production and processing. Yet, several white spots or areas of inefficiency still exist. Until recently, methodologies for assessing and efficiently managing risks posed by allergens in food were lacking. Furthermore, assuring the chemical safety of current and increasingly complex new foods and food concepts and innovations in food as mentioned above requires a