EFSA

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is the EU agency responsible for independent scientific advice on risks associated with the food and feed chain, headquartered in Parma, Italy and established in 2002 under Regulation (EC) No 178/2002. EFSA does not manage food-safety crises directly; it assesses risk and communicates findings to the European Commission, European Parliament, and EU member states who then take regulatory action. Its scientific outputs include opinions, technical reports, and Rapid Outbreak Assessments, the last of which it publishes jointly with the ECDC when a foodborne pathogen triggers a multi-country human case cluster.

In the pandemics-and-biosecurity briefing context, EFSA is the co-author of the joint ECDC/EFSA Rapid Outbreak Assessment for the Salmonella Stanley ST2045 cluster, due 1 July 2026. The cluster covers 83 cases in 10 EU countries since late December 2025, with children and young adults over-represented, and the suspected source vehicle is chicken-flavoured instant noodles or processed chicken sharing a common ingredient. The joint assessment is the standard EU mechanism for combining EFSA's food-chain traceability analysis with ECDC's epidemiological case data; its output will be the formal basis for any product recall or trade measure if a source product is identified.

EFSA's REMIT extends beyond foodborne pathogens: it covers pesticide residues, contaminants, animal feed additives, genetically modified organisms, and nutrition risk. Its Rapid Outbreak Assessment format, developed collaboratively with ECDC, is one of the EU's fastest-turnaround Science-to-policy tools, typically published within four to six weeks of a cluster being flagged.