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The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was urged to reconsider pre-2013 studies on the food contact material, Bisphenol A, at the Authority's stakeholder meeting on Thursday.

The meeting was held to discuss the draft protocol setting out how the Authority will go about its new assessment of the chemical. It explicitly rules out evaluation of studies available up to the end of 2013, which were included in its last 2015 assessment.

At the opening of the meeting, the chair of EFSA's BPA protocol working group, Ursula Gundert-Remy, appeared to rule out revisiting earlier studies.

She said the CEF panel, responsible for food contact materials, had a specific mandate from the European Commission only to consider new studies (post-2013). "And we have restrictions on time and money," she added.

Non-industry stakeholders at the meeting very much welcomed the fact that EFSA is consulting on the protocol and said it was a much better approach.

But they criticised EFSA’s earlier assessment, which concluded BPA is safe at current exposure, and said the Authority would immediately bias its new assessment unless it looked at some studies which they felt had been wrongly excluded earlier.

Paul Whaley, of Lancaster University, said the consultation on the protocol was best practice and a "landmark" decision.

"But there are some fairly serious problems with the protocol." He urged EFSA to go back and look at everything again.

"I would start afresh if it was me and I had loads of cash," he said. "You have to go back and make sure you have everything." Otherwise bias was introduced.

Angel Nadal, a Spanish scientist who represented the Endocrine Society, agreed and urged the Authority to ditch the "likely, likely as not, unlikely" categorisation which it is proposing.