EFSA quits Brussels for Parma home; commits to livestreaming

The EU’s Italian-based central food science and safety agency will livestream key plenary meetings from Parma including the health claim-assessing Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies (NDA) on 4-6 April.

EFSA has been criticised for being a 'black box' but has in recent years made gains in transparency and communications with industry, academia, consumer groups and other regulators and governments.

“Following a pilot phase in Brussels, which did not significantly increase attendance, all open plenary meetings will move back to Parma in 2017,” EFSA said.

“Registered observers will still be able to attend the meetings but now they also have the option of following open sessions of the meetings on EFSA’s website and taking part in the question and answer sessions with EFSA’s experts while online.”

It added: “We encourage attendees to pose questions to EFSA’s scientific experts.”

Physical attendance will still be possible and EFSA can be contacted at publicmeetings@efsa.europa.eu about that.