The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) have renewed and deepened their long‑standing collaboration, signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on 19 February 2026 to advance scientific cooperation and strengthen global food safety governance.
The agreement formalizes years of successful partnership and sets a comprehensive framework for joint work across a wide range of technical areas that are critical to public health, sustainable agriculture and resilient agrifood systems.
Food safety is a cornerstone of agrifood systems transformation, underpinning food security, healthy diets and sustainable development. The new MoU enhances FAO’s and EFSA’s ability to exchange details of their scientific work, data and methodologies, as well as strengthen their joint capacity to assess and communicate risks across food safety, animal and plant health, and nutrition.
“Together, we are creating a platform that is greater than the sum of its parts by enabling FAO and EFSA to unite their mutual strengths and accelerate achievement of FAO’s strategic goals of a better production, better nutrition, better environment and better life,” said Maximo Torero, FAO Chief Economist.
Building on their complementary strengths – pairing FAO’s and EFSA’s scientific expertise and data pools with FAO’s global reach and ability to translate evidence into policy support – the partnership will help countries reinforce food safety governance and better protect consumers.
FAO welcomes the MoU’s expanded emphasis on data sharing, the open exchange of methodological advances, and deeper collaboration across key technical domains.
The new agreement outlines an extensive programme of scientific collaboration, spanning the full breadth of food safety and agrifood systems. This includes joint work on pesticide risk assessment, alternatives to highly hazardous pesticides, and the exchange of water and soil quality data, to better understand contamination risks and environmental impacts.
FAO and EFSA will also strengthen cooperation on social science and risk communication, animal and plant health, foresight and horizon scanning. Together with a range of other areas for collaboration, the agreement forms a comprehensive framework to enhance research, improve early warning and surveillance, and support countries as they safeguard public health and build more resilient agrifood systems.
