Food is essential to life. And food safety is crucial for our health.
Do you remember the UK's mad cow disease crisis (bovine spongiform encephalopathy - BSE), or the Belgian dioxin affair? In the 1990s, a series of food crises exposed grave shortcomings in the food production and distribution system, undermining consumer confidence. As a result, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was set up. Now, barely 20 years later, European consumers are among the world's best protected and best informed about risks in the food chain.
EFSA is a European Union agency. It provides policymakers with impartial, high-calibre scientific advice on food-related risks, thereby helping to protect European consumers. At the same time, it works to bridge the gap between science and the consumer by informing the public promptly about existing and emerging risks associated with the food chain.
In 2016, EFSA organised an innovation prize - a Hackathon competition, for developers and designers from all over Europe, to create an app that gives easy access to the EFSA’s work.
EFSA to the people is the winner of this competition. This app, which you can access on your mobile, lets you:
- perform queries on EFSA's website and retrieve information
- check your latest food purchase by scanning its barcode
- read the latest news published on the EFSA website.
The app is available in English.