Residues of PFAS in Food

Frauke Averbeck is working in the Unit “Evaluation of Chemicals and Risk Management” at the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) in Dortmund/Germany. Amongst other tasks in the context of the REACH Regulation she is coordinating the German authorities’ work as well as co-leading, together with her Dutch colleagues, the common efforts of the five Member States proposing a comprehensive ban of PFASs under the REACH Regulation.

Norina Aßhoff is a Food Chemist and joined the Chemical and Veterinary Analytical Institute Münsterland-Emscher-Lippe as a PhD student in 2022.

Alexander Eckhardt is a Biologist and regulatory scientist at the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) in Bad Elster/Germany in the sub-department “Toxicology of Drinking Water and Swimming Pool Water”. Since 2015 he has been a specialist toxicologist of the DGPT and European Registered Toxicologist. As a member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Water Quality and Health (WQTAG), he is involved in updating the Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality. He is also a member of the Working Group Toxicology of PFAS of the German Drinking Water Commission.

Thomas Gude has been the Deputy Head of SQTS, Switzerland, for over 18 years. He is heading the laboratories dealing with food and non-food analysis as well as with risk assessments.

Ron Hoogenboom is the Assistant Programme Leader Food Contaminants at Wageningen Food Safety Research, dealing with environmental contaminants, pesticides and toxins from moulds, algae and plants. Since 2012 he has been a member of the EFSA CONTAM Panel and was the vice-chair of the WG on PFAS.

Michael Jud is a Food Chemist and Senior Scientific Officer in the Unit \"Monitoring Strategy and Coordination\" of the Food Safety Department at the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL). Being engaged in the BVL since 2002, the focus of his interest lies within the implementation of EU regulations regarding industrial and environmental contaminants as well as persistent organic pollutants in food. He is a member of several EC expert groups on contaminants in food and of the German delegation to the Codex alimentarius Committee on contaminants in Foods (CCCF).

Franziska Kupprat is a Biologist and has been working as a Scientist in the Department of Chemicals and Product Safety at the German Federal Institute for Risk Assesssment (BfR) in Berlin since 2020. She is involved in various REACH and CLP processes in the Unit for Chemical safety at BfR. Her main focus is on the evaluation of human health hazards in the universal PFAS restriction proposal.

Thomas Simat has been a Professor and the Chair of Food Science and FCM at the Technische Universität Dresden with research on FCM since 2003. He is the Chairman of the ‘German BfR Committee on Consumer Products’’.

Xanthippe Theurillat is an Analytical Chemist and a specialist in the Analytical Science Department in the field of food contaminants at Nestlé Research in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2012, she joined the Regional Swiss Official Food Control Laboratory in Lausanne as a scientific expert in the contaminants section. Since 2015, she is working at the Nestlé Research in Lausanne with a specific focus on the method development in the domain of contaminants, like pesticides, emerging and process contaminants and lately PFAS. Moreover, she participated in projects for the mechanistic understanding of process contaminants which allowed to publish subsequently patent applications.

Veerle Vanheusden is a Policy Officer in DG SANTE of the European Commission. She joined the European Commission in 2013, where she worked for four years in the Unit “Pesticides and Biocides”. In 2017 she moved to the Unit dealing with food processing technologies and novel foods, where her main area of activity is the EU policy and legislation on contaminants. She has previously worked in the private pharmaceutical sector.