Beneris deliverables
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Project objectives
| Objective | Success | Comment |
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| The general objective of this proposal is to create a framework for handling complicated benefit-risk situations, and apply it for analysis of the benefits and risks of certain foods. The first food commodity to be used in the development of the methodology is fish. | Very successful. | The framework was based on a novel idea of open participation on a web workspace. Although openness was described already in the Technical Annex, the importance and prospects of this approach was only understood during the first year of the project. A shift of emphasis from case studies towards framework development occurred starting from the first year, as described in annual reports and the mid-term meeting.
The resulting framework will gradually have a major change in the science-policy interaction in many areas, including but not limited to food. Unfortunately, we were not able to demonstrate this during the project. The web workspace and the framework developed are being and will be used in the future, so this demonstration should occur in two years. |
| Objectives in developing benefit-risk analysis methods | ||
| To develop Bayesian belief networks (BBN) to handle complicated benefit-risk situations, and to develop a decision support system (DSS) based on BBN. | Successful. | Uninet software was further developed for open benefit-risk assessments for food. E.g. functionalities for linking Uninet models to Opasnet assessment descriptions were added. See e.g. Benefit-risk assessment of methyl mercury and omega-3 fatty acids in fish |
| To develop improved methods for dose-response assessment, combining epidemiological and toxicological data, and apply them in combining epidemiological and toxicological information on fish contaminants (esp. dioxins and PCBs). | Successful. | The work done was described in Media:D8 Generalized Method and its application to the BENERIS project pj rc.pdf. |
| To develop an integrated repository of surveillance, nutrient and food consumption data that is capable of receiving, analyzing, and disseminating the accumulated data for benefit-risk analysis and to key stakeholders. | Successful. | The integrated repository was developed with wide usability in mind. We wanted that it could contain very different kinds of information, basically anything that could be used in benefit-risk assessments. During the work (mostly second and third year) we realised that the database structure and interfaces need more work than we originally thought if the usability objective is to be met. Therefore, we put less emphasis in collecting raw data. The usability was demonstrated by the case studies. See e.g. methylmercury data and the description of the data. |
| Scientific objectives in food risks and benefits | ||
| To review the existing databases and their availability for chemical contaminant data in Europe, and integrate available data. | Successful. | The data was reviewed in D7 Database review Contaminant food intake. |
| To estimate average nutrient intakes and food consumption in various subgroups based on national registries in three countries and to explore the use of the data in benefit-risk analysis. | ||
| To estimate the health benefits of fish, and understand the effect of fish on different population subgroups (age, health, pregnancy etc.) | ||
| To establish the association between external dose (intake) and internal dose (concentrations in the body) by analysing contaminants (PCDD/Fs, PCBs, PBDEs, organotin compounds, PCNs and Hg/methyl-Hg) from 100-200 placentas. | Successful. | More than 100 placentas were analysed. The results are described in media:D19 Contaminants in placenta.doc. |
| To combine existing and new data from food consumption databases with data on levels of contaminants in fish. The special emphasis is on children and the developing foetus. | ||
| To estimate distributions of nutrient intake and food consumption relevant to benefit-risk analysis in a number of populations, and also the variability in exposure among various subgroups in the population. | ||
| To identify food consumption patterns and food choices that determine the intake of those nutrients and contaminants that are related to benefit/risk-balance of a food item. | ||
| To explore the usability of these patterns in another country than in which they were developed. | ||
| To find out the effects of certain policy options on dietary habits and on intake of important nutrients and contaminants (e.g. vitamin D, n-3 fatty acids, dioxins, PCBs). As an example, does a restrictive recommendation on fish eating increase meat consumption? | ||
| Objectives in dissemination | ||
| To integrate results into updated benefit-risk assessments, and evaluate the remaining uncertainties and their importance for decision-making. | ||
| To evaluate the integration methodology by all partners and develop it further. | Mixed result. | The methodology was presented to Beneris partners and one Qalibra partner in September 2007 in Berlin. It was discussed there. In addition, it was planned to be evaluated in more detail by FSAI. However, the methodology was found very confusing and different from traditional benefit-risk assessment. Detailed evaluation was considered impossible by FSAI. Although the evaluation itself was not very successful, it gave a lot of food for thought and boosted the development of the method into something more practical and understandable. It was a confusing learning experience, but in the end, we did learn many useful things that were important for the method. |
| To develop an internet interface for publishing risk assessment results. | Extremely successful. | Our original objectives were rather modest here: the plan was to develop a website where stand-alone assessment models can be published together with detailed descriptions. However, we were able to develop a web workspace where whole assessments can be initiated, designed, executed, evaluated, and disseminated, and where stakeholders can participate at any point. There is still a lot of work to be done to be able to actually run assessment models within the workspace. Other projects (e.g. Intarese) are now continuing this work. |
| To develop a method to publish entire benefit-risk models over the Internet using XML. | Extremely successful. | See also above. In the beginning of the project, we were only planning to focus on Analytica models which are in XML format. We developed a tool for automatically converting Analytica model files into model descriptions. Then we developed better practices to describe models directly in the workspace, which made a big leap towards open and collaborative modelling systems. |
| To develop methods to collect feedback from end-users about benefit-risk analyses. | Successful. | A survey functionality was developed to the Opasnet workspace. See e.g. End user evaluation. |
| To enhance the availability of existing databases through this interface. | Successful. | Opasnet workspace offers a practical place to describe existing databases (e.g. WHO mortality data, IA Tools. Opasnet Base offers a practical place to actually store the data, if it is freely available. This kind of work started in Beneris and is now ongoing in other projects. For example, Heimtsa project is using these tools to collect Morbidity data for Europe. |
| To disseminate the results and to evaluate the relevance and usefulness of the work done in the project from the perspective of an end-user / authority. | Mostly successful. | D46 End user evaluation looked at this issue although not as extensively as originally thought. In addition, the case studies were finalised later than thought, and therefore the time to disseminate results was shorter. On the other hand, Beneris was actively discussing with other projects, notably Intarese and Heimtsa. This was a major way to obtain evaluation and comments about the usefulness of Beneris framework and workspace. So, we got a lot of feedback from assessors as end users of the framework, but not very much from authorities or other end users. |