The consumption ratio of flavouring materials: a mechanism for setting priorities for safety evaluation.

The toxicological testing of the millions of known chemicals or even the thousands of food components is not practical at present. Therefore, priorities for testing should be set carefully, to ensure that primary attention is given to materials for which risk management can potentially improve public health. Most flavouring materials used today by the food industry occur widely in natural and traditional foods. A proposed Consumption Ratio (CR) relates the amount of a flavouring material found in natural and traditional foods to the amount added to food by food processors. A CR above 1 means that the consumption of the flavouring material takes place predominantly via traditional food. High CR values should establish that the priority ranking for testing these flavouring substances needs to be no higher than that for testing the complete foods.