Application of systematic review methodology to food and feed safety assessments to support decision making

Systematic reviews are commonly used in human health research to provide overviews of existing evidence pertinent to clearly formulated specific questions, using pre-specified and standardised methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report and analyse data from the studies that are included in the reviews. Formal systematic reviews have rarely been used in food and feed safety risk assessments and the existing systematic review methods in other disciplines may not be directly applicable in this field. This Guidance aims to assist the application of systematic reviews to food and feed safety risk assessments in support of decision making, by describing a framework for…