| The Swedish Standards Institute (SIS) and the Swedish National Food Administration (NFA), together with the EuroFIR consortium have submitted a proposal to the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) to create a new expert working group to develop a European standard for food composition data. The secretariat for this will be provided by SIS.
The collaboration aims to provide a framework that facilitates the compilation of high quality data on the description of foods, food components and compositional values. Data will be clear and comparable.
A key aim of EuroFIR is the harmonisation and standardisation of work on food composition data in Europe. Development of the EuroFIR databank system requires that databases are established according to common principles, and that data in national online databases are presented, with their metadata, in a uniform way.
GSI, the Global Data Synchronisation Network, will also be involved in this committee in order to develop a food and beverage extension of the GS1 trade item standard. The GS1 trade item standard is a system used widely by the retail industry to communicate data about trade items. The food and beverage extension specifies food-related information, some of which is involved in the EuroFIR specification, although that from EuroFIR is more extensive.
Overall, a European standard for food composition data would provide an essential tool for access to and exchange of comparable, high quality food composition data for industry, regulators and researchers across Europe.
For more information about CEN see http://www.cen.eu/cenorm/homepage.htm
| 
