We have developed an ontology that reflect the wealth of information found in EFSA's scientific opinions on health claims 1 , including the specific nutrients or bioactive ingredients, the health relationships and biomarkers, the conditions of use for such a claim (e.g. the population that is referred to in the claim) and the supportive evidence underlying these claims.

To build this ontology, we have reviewed all EU authorised health claims and their underlying scientific opinions. These opinions detail the active substances (foods or food ingredients), the beneficial effects as well as the relevant evidence substantiating the relationship between ingredient and its effect. We have extracted these information manually from all scientific opinions regarding the authorized claims in the Register. This resulted in the inclusion of 260 claims and their scientific opinions: the scientific substantiation and conditions of use of 235 authorised function claims (229 based on generally accepted scientific evidence and six based on newly developed evidence), 13 disease risk reduction claims and 12 claims on children's development and health.

Our ontology has four sub-structures in order to better explain different dimensions of health claims, as shown in Figure 1. These relate to the steps taken in assessing scientific dossiers for health claim authorisations the food or active ingredient itself (here labelled as Food), the beneficial physiological effect (Health Effect), the potential target for this beneficial physiological effect (Target Population) and finally, the scientific evidence that is supports the association between consuming the ingredient and the suggested beneficial physiological effect (Scientific Evidence).