The evolution of the EFSA OpenFoodTox database

Since its establishment in 2002, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has been providing independent scientific advice on risks associated with the food chain. This manuscript provides a description of EFSA’s chemical hazards database OpenFoodTox (OFT), future perspectives and activities. OFT aims at mapping all the hazard identification and characterisation data that have been published in outputs from EFSA throughout the years. To date, OFT contains data for more than 5700 chemical substances in the food/feed chain. In line with the One Substance-One Assessment approach as part of the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, EFSA aims to further improve data quality and interoperability of OFT with IUCLID 6 and the EU Common Data Platform on Chemical Safety. To enhance its usability as a supporting tool for risk assessment activities, OFT will be migrated to IUCLID 6. More data will be collected and added to OFT, including endpoints related to in vitro assays, non-critical effects and exposure values. Furthermore, new in silico models (e.g., tools for read-across and grouping) will be developed based on the data already present in OFT for chemicals and endpoints that have been tested, with the aim of estimating the corresponding properties for the untested chemicals and endpoints.