Standing for Flavours, Additives and Food Contact Materials Exposure Tool, the FACET software is the culmination of over five years’ work in collaboration with partners from industry, government and academia across Europe. This is the first time so many stakeholders across so many areas have come together to develop a harmonised methodology to monitor consumer exposure to these chemical groups in Europe.
FACET can be used to estimate dietary exposure to food chemicals in Europe, in particular for flavourings, additives and food packaging substances. These chemicals are present in our diet in varying amounts and consumed in different ways, so it is of vital importance to ensure levels of dietary exposure to these substances is at safe levels. This ensures the protection of consumer health (which is of key importance to regulators), and also provides a tool to industry that facilitates innovation by dramatically reducing the uncertainty around the safe use of different chemicals and also provides a predictive intake modelling tool.
The software contains a wealth of unique databases and models. These include:
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These databases were all linked to a migration model that can estimate the amount of a substance leaching from packaging into food, allowing exposure to the substance to be calculated for the 15 dietary surveys from the 8 member states.
The software is freely available for download from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) website. Several partners, including the JRC, Creme Global and the packaging industry are committed to sustaining FACET into the future with updates and new features already planned. For more information, please contact Creme Global.
