Food Safety

Questions about the article for ‘3-Nitrooxypropanol “3- NOP” as a feed additive for all ruminants Safety Assessment’

Request

Your request was about the following information:

Having read the Food Standards Agency/Food Standards Scotland report:

"Safety Assessment: Outcome of assessment of 3-Nitrooxypropanol “3- NOP” as a feed additive for all ruminants for milk production and reproduction, from DSM Nutritional Products Reference number RP1059"

It appears that the safety assessment was based on a "dossier" provided by the applicant, DSM Nutritional Products Ltd., UK

My questions that flow from this are:

Q1. Is there public access to this dossier?

Q2. On what scientific study data was the safety conclusion based?

Q3. How can government agencies, like the FSA and the FSS base safety conclusions on data provided by the very company they are assessing, surely there is a profound conflict of interest here?

Response

A1. There is no public access to the dossier however a summary of the safety evaluation, outcomes and the relevant data is provided at the link below:

https://www.food.gov.uk/research/rp1059-outcome-of-assessment-of-3-nitrooxypropanol-3-nopsummary

A2. A list of studies is provided in the safety assessment summary, please see the link below:

https://www.food.gov.uk/research/outcome-of-assessment-of-3-nitrooxypropanol-3-nopappendix-1-list-of-toxicological-studies

A3. As part of the safety assessment, opinions were requested from external experts from our independent Scientific Advisory Committees and Joint Expert Groups. This was to ensure the best available evidence was used. Members of Scientific Advisory Committees including Advisory Committee on Animal Feedingstuffs (ACAF) are required to declare any potential conflicts of interest as per the standard process for all safety evaluations.