A new global scientific tool for the assessment and prioritization of chemical hazards in food raw materials

•We developed a tool for prioritization of chemical contaminants in raw materials.•Scientific risk assessment and conservative exposure assessment are applied.•Prioritization is based on likelihood to cause harm and severity of health effect.•The model is user-friendly, allows grouping chemicals and use of regional diets.

The purpose of this study is to develop a globally valid chemical risk assessment tool that provides the user with a priority rating in terms of which chemicals are important to manage in raw materials. The process entails the use of decision trees that enable the determination of risk (or “likelihood to cause harm”), and severity using objective and transparent selection criteria. Taken together, severity and risk are positioned in an HACCP-like matrix informing on the prioritization level of each combination of chemical hazard and raw material. The proposed model is intended to be adequately protective for consumer's health, as it considers a conservative food intake scenario, as well as various sources of contaminant exposure. The model's design is flexible and can easily be adapted to the needs of different food product categories and scenarios. Case studies are presented to illustrate the feasibility of the approach, and the model was tested using several examples, the results of which are consistent with existing data in the literature.