A consortium led by Andrea Haase has published an implementation plan for a qualification system designed to accelerate the regulatory uptake of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) in the food and feed sector, with a specific focus on nanomaterial risk assessment. The plan, released as an external scientific report by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on 24 July 2026, builds on a prior proposal from the NAMs4NANO consortium (Haase et al., 2024) and consolidates feedback from public consultation, stakeholder dialogues with bodies including the OECD, ECHA, SCCS, EMA, and ECVAM, as well as workshops and conferences. The system aims to provide a framework for qualifying NAMs for specific contexts of use, thereby enabling their use as direct evidence in regulatory decision-making rather than merely as mechanistic support. The report details readiness criteria for assessing scientific validity, which were tested internally and externally through case studies.
Feedback indicated broad acceptance among key stakeholders, though potential critical issues were identified that could hamper implementation. The plan is intended to support the EFSA Guidance on risk assessment of nanomaterials, which already recommends using NAMs in initial steps to generate information. For stakeholders, the qualification system could reduce reliance on animal testing and speed up risk assessments for nanomaterials in food and feed, benefiting industry by lowering costs and time-to-market for innovative products. However, it may impose new compliance burdens on developers seeking qualification, and regulators will need to adapt to new types of evidence. The next steps involve further refinement of the readiness criteria and broader adoption across the sector.