Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA)

International agency

Joint expert committee convened by the Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization · International

Visit the source site · Audited 2026-10-14

Who pays for it

FAO and WHO fund scientific advice through regular budgets and extra-budgetary resources, usually government contributions linked to specific activities; a current JECFA-specific budget or donor amount was not verified.

Status: Supporting

JECFA has formal expert conflict procedures and primarily public or institutional funding, but it can assess data supplied by manufacturers, including proprietary data. It is used for food-chemical questions with its assessment date and data limits visible.

How SafeMomma uses it

We use dated JECFA evaluations for food-chemical exposure questions, not for human medication transfer into breast milk.

The audit

Who controls it: JECFA is a joint FAO and WHO expert committee whose work includes food additives, contaminants, natural toxins and veterinary-drug residues. Experts serve in their individual capacity, with joint FAO/WHO secretariats organizing assessments.
Money: FAO and WHO fund scientific advice through regular programme budgets and extra-budgetary resources. Extra-budgetary contributions are usually from governments and tied to activities; a current JECFA-specific budget or donor amount was not verified.
Conflict rules: Experts declare real, potential or apparent financial and other interests, which secretariats assess with the meeting Chair. Participation can be limited or excluded, and managed interests can be disclosed; signed forms are available on request rather than routinely online.
Method: JECFA assesses chemicals and sets benchmarks such as acceptable daily intakes, acute reference doses and residue limits. It uses published research and data from governments, manufacturers and industries, including unpublished or proprietary data; data providers are excluded from decisions.
Dates on its pages: The framework was updated in 2018, and evaluations are meeting- and substance-specific rather than having one portfolio-wide last-checked date.
Political exposure: JECFA is convened by intergovernmental bodies and advises Codex and member countries, whose priorities may prompt work. No source-specific political intervention or pressure-driven change was identified in the reviewed materials.
Money exposure: The disclosed funding model is mainly public and institutional, but industry can provide relevant study data, including unpublished or proprietary material. No company submission was linked to a breastfeeding recommendation; data safeguards do not make every dataset independent.
Track record: No source-specific correction, retraction or major pregnancy or lactation error was identified in the reviewed materials, which were not an exhaustive history. The FSA's 2025 mercury assessment compares an earlier JECFA benchmark with a later EFSA value, showing that benchmark dates and authorities can differ; none of b1-b5 supplied a separate JECFA test finding.

Where this comes from

Incentive exposure describes pressure from money or politics, not whether the source is right. Funding alone does not show influence.

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