GMO Risk Assessment and Communication of Evidence

The project GRACE will
a) elaborate and sustainably implement a transparent framework for the review of GMOs or GM food and feed effects on environment, socio-economics and health and
b) reconsider the design, execution and interpretation of results of animal feeding trials as well as in vitro studies for assessing the safety of GM food and feed.
The framework will create high quality reviewing processes for different fields of GMO impact assessment and address the need for a well documented, transparent and sustainable representation of these reviewing processes. This will provide valuable and accessible information addressing the main issues associated with GMOs and enabling risk assessors, managers, scientists and the general public to reiterate and update their evaluations and conclusions on GMOs. It will adapt recently elaborated methodologies for (systematic) reviewing of the risk assessment information of GMOs and derived food and feed. The quality assessment for all reviewed papers and studies as well as the reviews conducted by the consortium, will be referenced by an open access database and “one-stop-shop” for data and information relevant to GMO risk assessment.
Animal feeding trials and in vitro studies will clarify and compare the scientific added value of 90–day feeding trials with whole foods with advanced state-of-the-art analytical, in vitro and in-silico tools. Suitable animal GMO-feeding models will be investigated, that are based on European (EFSA) and international guidance, and the project will provide guidance for relevant, alternative in vitro cell-based approaches for specific topics within the overall food and feed safety assessment. Available standard or scientifically approved protocols form the basis of the investigations also in the case of the analytical, in-vitro and second in-silico approaches. GRACE will provide guidance for the use and improvement of existing and suggested assessment tools in the field of food and feed safety.