At Seventy-third World Health Assembly, a resolution named “Strengthening efforts on food safety’’ was endorsed by Member States. One of the prominent requests is to update, in coordination with FAO, and in consultation with Member States and OIE, the WHO global strategy for food safety, in order to address current and emerging challenges, incorporate new technologies and include innovative strategies for strengthening food safety systems, and to submit a report for consideration by the Seventy-fifth World Health Assembly.

Based on the needs, WHO issued a 2-month Call for Experts on WHO website. The objective of this call is to identify international renowned experts who are willing to serve in WHO Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to advise WHO’s work in food safety, especially on the technical content for the update of the strategy. The terms of reference and the criteria of selection were also listed on the website. All the applicants were requested to fill an online form together with the curriculum vitae and the declarations of interest form (DOI) as attachments.

After the two-month call, in total 640 applications were received. WHO Secretariat, with representatives from headquarters and regional offices, assessed the candidates. Eventually, after multiple selection panel meetings, 24 members were selected to join the TAG, ensuring to the highest extent possible, geographic representation from all WHO regions, gender balance, proven excellence in required expertise, and no evidence of conflicts of interests that may affect their advice to WHO. Applicants from private sectors were not selected in line with WHO’s Guidelines for Declaration of Interests. Instead, experts from private sectors were invited to comment on the draft strategy and the collected inputs were reflected in the revised strategy as appropriate. For the detailed selection process please refer to the chart in the download section. 

After the appointment of TAG members by the WHO Director-General, the names and brief biographies of TAG members (“Published Information”) were disclosed for public notice and comment for two weeks. No comments were received from the externals regarding any potential conflicts of interest. The TAG membership is valid for two years as indicated in its Terms of Reference and conflicts of interests are evaluated on a regular basis.