Critical appraisal of the assessment of benefits and risks for foods, ‘BRAFO Consensus Working Group’

BRAFO, Benefit-Risk Analysis for Foods, was a European Commission project funded within Framework Six as a Specific Support Action and coordinated by ILSI Europe. BRAFO developed a tiered methodology for assessing the benefits and risks of foods and food components, utilising a quantitative, common scale for health assessment in higher tiers. This manuscript reports on the implications of the experience gained during the development of the project for the further improvement of benefit–risk assessment methodology. It was concluded that the methodology proposed is applicable to a range of situations and that it does help in optimising resource utilisation through early identification of those benefit–risk questions where benefit clearly outweighs risk or vice versa. However, higher tier assessments are complex and demanding of time and resources, emphasising the need for prioritisation. Areas identified as requiring further development to improve the utility of benefit–risk assessment include health weights for different populations and endpoints where they do not currently exist, extrapolation of effects from studies in animals to humans, use of in vitro data in benefit–risk assessments, and biomarkers of early effect and how these would be used in a quantitative assessment.