US government was the first to introduce Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point, the system that had a tremendous impact on everybody's life starting from the food and packaging companies up to consumer themselves. The rest of the nations simply followed US approach with a considerable delay both in terms of legislation and implementation. In the case of genetically modified (GM) or genetically engineered foods, the situation was entirely different. United States benefited from the 'dubious', and definitely not proved, 'substantial equivalence' principle invoked as the most practical approach to assess the safety of GM foods and food ingredients. US legislation appeared to be considerably more lenient than the European Union. The latter required many more analyses and labelling of GM food or food components. In this article, an update is attempted of the entire US legislation falling in fields like food safety, food technology, GM foods and finally legislation referring to specific foods (animal origin - meat, poultry, fish, dairy; and agricultural produces - vegetables, fruits) and water quality by means of fourteen comprehensive tables.

In their opinion paper, Liu et al. highlight the insufficient development of methods such as integrated modelling tools to assess the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus system complexity. This can be attributed to the lack of research programmes addressing the WEF nexus, especially in the European Union. To enable the development of innovative research methods, we need educational and research programmes that explicitly focus on the WEF security nexus. These programmes should promote interdisciplinary approaches that incorporate hydrology as well as sciences related to energy and food security, and environmental governance.

Water, food and energy are at the core of human needs and there is a boundless complex cycle among these three basic human needs. Ecosystems are in the center of this nexus, since they contribute to the provision of each component, making it imperative to understand the role of ecosystems in securing food, water and energy for human well-being. In this study we aimed to map and assess water provisioning services and associated benefits to support the ecosystem–water–food–energy nexus by taking into account environmental flow requirements for riverine ecosystems using the hydrological model Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). We developed a framework that includes indicators of renewable water (capacity of ecosystem to provide water) and water use (service flow) and we applied it in the Danube river basin over the period 1995–2004. Water scarcity indicators were used to map the possible water scarcity in the subbasins, and analyze the spatial match of water availability and water use. The results show that modelling is instrumental to perform the integrated analysis of the ecosystem–water–food–energy nexus; and that spatial mapping is a powerful tool to display environmental availability of water provisioning and regulatory services delivered by ecosystems, and can support the nexus analysis.

The escalating human demand for food, water, energy, fibres and minerals have resulted in increasing commercial pressures on land and water resources, which are partly reflected by the recent increase in transnational land investments. Studies have shown that many of the land-water issues associated with land acquisitions are directly related to the areas of energy and food production. This paper explores the land-water-energy-food nexus in relation to large-scale farmland investments pursued by investors from European countries. The analysis is based on a “resource assessment approach” which evaluates the linkages between land acquisitions for agricultural (including both energy and food production) and forestry purposes, and the availability of land and water in the target countries. To that end, the water appropriated by agricultural and forestry productions is quantitatively assessed and its impact on water resource availability is analysed. The analysis is meant to provide useful information to investors from EU countries and policy makers on aspects of resource acquisition, scarcity, and access to promote responsible land investments in the target countries.

This study investigates food trade patterns in relation to water resources availability in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries (SEMED). Examinations show that most of these countries have a high dependence on the import of water intensive crops -- cereal, vegetable oil and sugar, in the domestic food supply. The region as a whole is marginally a net exporter of fruits and vegetables, while variations are substantial across countries. Multi-variable regression analyses show that intensification of water scarcity is an important factor in explaining the increase in food import in the SEMED countries during the past two decades. It also finds that while GDP per capita has a strong influence on the level of food import in a country, its impact on changes in the import during the same period is rather modest. No significant relationship is found between the trade of fruits and vegetables and water resources availability. The projection on food import with respect to the decline in per capita water resources availability results in an increase of 40%, 39% and 14%, respectively, for cereal, vegetable oil and sugar by 2020 in the region, holding other factors constant. The European Union (EU) is the major food trade partner of the SEMED countries, except for cereal. About 70% of the fruit export and 55% of the vegetable export of the region currently go to the EU market. Expanding the export of fruits and vegetables is conducive to improving the value of water use in the SEMED countries. However, the expansion is constrained partly by the barriers in the destination markets, notably the EU.

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus in both academia and policy. This concept draws attention to the link between different environmental and societal domains, and potentially entails substantive shifts in governance processes. As a consequence, policy-makers and scientists have started to develop metrics to make these interactions and ‘trade-offs’ visible. However, it is unknown if current framings of the nexus and relevant quantified metrics either reinforce or challenge existing governance structures. This paper explores relationships between framings of the nexus, metrics and models of governance based on discussions with staff within the European Commission. Although narratives around the need for new metrics are situated in a conventional script about the use of evidence to change policy, our data indicate processes of co-production, by which the use (or non-use) of any new metrics is dependent on existing institutional practices; and will reflect dominant political orderings. In doing so we provide a critical analysis of the role of metrics in environmental governance, and direct attention to the discursive, institutional and political arrangements in which they are embedded and with which they are co-constitutive. Focusing on the cultural and institutional settings in which they are established and used, our study suggests that the question of metrics in the water-energy-food nexus needs to be explored as a problem of establishing a legitimate policy objective in the European Commission and EU policy-making more broadly.

Today most foods are available in a packed form. During storage, the migration of chemical substances from food packaging materials into food may occur and may therefore be a potential source of consumer exposure. To protect the consumer, standard migration tests are laid down in Regulation (EU) No. 10/2011. When using those migration tests and applying additional conservative conventions, estimated exposure is linked with large uncertainties including a certain margin of safety. Thus the research project FACET was initiated within the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission with the aim of developing a probabilistic migration modelling framework which allows one (1) to calculate migration into foods under real conditions of use; and (2) to deliver realistic concentration estimates for consumer exposure modelling for complex packaging materials (including multi-material multilayer structures). The aim was to carry out within the framework of the FACET project a comprehensive systematic study on the solubility behaviour of foodstuffs for potentially migrating organic chemicals. Therefore a rapid and convenient method was established to obtain partition coefficients between polymer and food, K P/F. With this method approximately 700 time-dependent kinetic experiments from spiked polyethylene films were performed using model migrants, foods and ethanol–water mixtures. The partition coefficients of migrants between polymer and food (K P/F) were compared with those obtained using ethanol–water mixtures (K P/F’s) to investigate whether an allocation of food groups with common migration behaviour to certain ethanol–water mixtures could be made. These studies have confirmed that the solubility of a migrant is mainly dependent on the fat content in the food and on the ethanol concentration of ethanol–water mixtures. Therefore dissolution properties of generic food groups for migrants can be assigned to those of ethanol–water mixtures. All foodstuffs (including dry foods) when allocated to FACET model food group codes can be classified into a reduced number of food categories each represented by a corresponding ethanol–water equivalency.

Recently, reports have been published on the occurrence of chlorate mainly in fruits and vegetables. Chlorate is a by-product of chlorinating agents used to disinfect water, and can be expected to be found in varying concentrations in drinking water. Data on potable water taken at 39 sampling points across Europe showed chlorate to range from < 0.003 to 0.803 mg l –¹ with a mean of 0.145 mg l –¹. Chlorate, however, can also be used as a pesticide, but authorisation was withdrawn in the European Union (EU), resulting in a default maximum residue limit (MRL) for foods of 0.01 mg kg –¹. This default MRL has now led to significant problems in the EU, where routinely disinfected water, used in the preparation of food products such as vegetables or fruits, leaves chlorate residues in excess of the default MRL, and in strict legal terms renders the food unmarketable. Due to the paucity of data on the chlorate content of prepared foods in general, we collated chlorate data on more than 3400 samples of mainly prepared foods, including dairy products, meats, fruits, vegetables and different food ingredients/additives. In total, 50.5% of the food samples contained chlorate above 0.01 mg kg –¹, albeit not due to the use of chlorate as a pesticide but mainly due to the occurrence of chlorate as an unavoidable disinfectant by-product. A further entry point of chlorate into foods may be via additives/ingredients that may contain chlorate as a by-product of the manufacturing process (e.g. electrolysis). Of the positive samples in this study, 22.4% revealed chlorate above 0.1 mg kg –¹. In the absence of EU levels for chlorate in water, any future EU regulations must consider the already available WHO guideline value of 0.7 mg l –¹ in potable water, and the continued importance of the usage of oxyhalides for disinfection purposes.

Energy is one of the cornerstones essential for human life, along with other services such as water and food. Understanding how the different services in the energy-water-food (EWF) nexus interact and are perceived by different actors is key to achieving sustainability. In this paper, we derive a model of the EWF nexus using fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM). Data were collected in a two-step approach from workshops with researchers and stakeholders involved in the three focal sectors. Four FCMs were developed; one for each of the EWF sectors, and one for the interactions that create the nexus between EWF. The FCM represents the combined views of the groups who participated in the workshops, the importance and limitations of which is discussed. To demonstrate its effectiveness, the aggregated FCM was applied to predict the impacts on the EWF nexus of four scenarios under which the United Kingdom would depart from the European Union (i.e. Brexit). The FCM indicated that energy-related concepts had the largest influence on the EWF nexus and that EWF demand will decrease most under a ‘hard-Brexit’ scenario. The demand for energy was shown to decline relatively less than other services and was strongly associated with gross domestic product (GDP), whereas UK population size had a stronger effect on water and food demand. Overall, we found a threefold change across all concepts in scenarios without freedom of movement, contribution to the EU budget, and increased policy devolution to the UK.

The high number of people moving around by ferries and cruise ships in conjunction with great amounts of food and potable water transported (occasionally overloaded) and consumed by passengers constitute a possible risk for communicable diseases. Another issue of equally great importance is the food handlers who come from diverse origin and have a different mentality, habits, and background. In this paper an attempt is made to present comparatively EU and US legislation that could be potentially applicable to passenger ships food premises and potable water supplies. Moreover, food and water related hazards, not currently covered by EU legislation, were assessed together with US legislation and other guidelines for cruise ships.