Article 4 Tasks to be entrusted to organisations on the list

Without prejudice to the fulfilment of its mission and performance of its tasks pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, the Authority may, with their agreement, entrust to one or more of the organisations on the list tasks which involve them providing it with scientific and technical support.

The Advisory Forum shall ensure that there is a good general match between the requests for contributions which the Authority puts to the organisations on the list and the scope of those organisations to respond favourably. To this end the Executive Director shall make all the necessary information available to the Advisory Forum.

The tasks which may be entrusted to the organisations on the list, either to one organisation or to several working together, are those which consist in:

• disseminating best practices and improving methods of collecting and analysing scientific and technical data, particularly for the purposes of facilitating comparability and producing a Community-level summary;

• collecting and analysing specific data in response to a common priority, in particular the Community priorities contained in the Authority’s work programmes, and in cases where the Authority’s scientific assistance is urgently needed by the Commission, especially in the context of the general plan for crisis management referred to in Article 55 of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002;

• collecting and analysing data with a view to facilitating risk assessment by the Authority, including assessment tasks in the field of human nutrition in relation to Community legislation, especially the compiling and/or processing of scientific data on any substance, treatment, food or feed, preparation, organism or contaminant which may be linked with a health risk, and the collection and/or analysis of data on the exposure of Member States’ populations to a health risk associated with food or feed;

• producing scientific data or works contributing to the risk assessment tasks, including assessment tasks in the field of human nutrition in relation to Community legislation, for which the Authority is responsible; this type of task must correspond to precise problems identified in the course of the work of the Authority, and in particular that of its Committee and permanent Scientific Panels, and must not duplicate Community research projects or data or contributions which it is the industry’s duty to provide, especially in the context of authorisation procedures;

• preparing the Authority’s scientific opinions, including preparatory work relating to the assessment of authorisation dossiers;

• preparing the harmonisation of risk assessment methods;

• sharing data of common interest, e.g. the establishing of databases;

• the tasks referred to in Articles 6 and 18(3)(b) of Regulation (EC) No 1829/2003.