PlantLIBRA stands for Plant Food Supplements: Levels of Intake, Benefit and Risk Assessment. Plant food supplements, or botanicals, have high acceptance by European consumers. Potentially, they can deliver significant health benefits, safely, and at relatively low costs. New regulations and EFSA guidance are also now in. However, concerns about safety, quality and efficacy of these products remain, and bottlenecks in risk and benefit assessments need to be solved.
This EU funded project aims to foster the safe use of food supplements containing plants or botanical preparations, by increasing science-based decision-making by regulators and food chain operators. To make informed decisions, competent authorities and food businesses need more quality-assured and accessible information and better tools (e.g. meta data bases).
PlantLIBRA aims to develop, validate and disseminate data and methodologies for risk and benefit assessment and implement sustainable international cooperation.
International cooperation, on-spot and in-language capacity building are necessary to ensure the quality of the plants imported in the EU. PlantLIBRA spans 4 continents and 25 partners, comprising leading academics, Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises, industry and non-profit organizations. Through its partners it exploits the databases and methodologies of two Networks of Excellence, EuroFIR and MoniQA.
PlantLIBRA intends to fill the exisiting gaps of intake data by conducting harmonised field surveys in the regions of the EU and apply consumer sciences to botanicals. Existing composition and safety data will be collated into a meta-database and new analytical data and methods will be generated.
The overarching aim is to integrate diverse scientific expertise into a single “science of botanicals”. PlantLIBRA works closely with EFSA since several PlantLIBRA partners and experts are involved in the relevant EFSA Working Groups, and also plans shoulder-to-shoulder cooperation with competent authorities and stakeholders.
PlantLIBRA spans 4 continents and 25 partners, comprising leading academics, Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises, industry and non-profit organizations. Through its partners it exploits the databases and methodologies of two Networks of Excellence, EuroFIR and MoniQA.
