Nikolaus Kriz
Head of Department
Department/Unit: Risk Assessment Services
Phone: +39 0521 036 970
Email address: Nikolaus.Kriz [at] efsa.europa.eu
Nik Kriz is Head of EFSA’s Risk Assessment Services (ENABLE) Department.
He is a veterinary surgeon with 28 years of professional experience having worked in general practice, veterinary clinics and academia in four continents before moving to risk assessment in One Health at the European Medicines Agency. He then took on managerial functions in the area of parallel distribution and certificates, as well as supporting the work of the seven EMA scientific committees. In these roles Nik was responsible, among other things, for the EU regulation on substances essential for the treatment of Equidae and the development of guidance for multi-strain dossiers plus the early development of the new veterinary medicines regulation. He also implemented the public register for parallel distributed products in the EU, a major step towards improved transparency in the sector.
Nik joined EFSA on 1 January 2017 as Head of Unit for Animal Health and Welfare and Plant Health, where he was responsible for delivering risk assessments for topics as diverse as Xylella fastidiosa, African swine fever, avian influenza and the welfare of farmed rabbits.
The main achievements of his tenure were the scientific support provided to the European Commission in implementing the Animal Health Law, the setting up of an animal disease data model, partnering on data collections to analyse risks from diseases shared between wildlife, livestock and humans, the introduction of commodity risk assessment of high risk plants, and horizon scanning for plant pests. He also oversaw a reprioritisation of work to enable the unit to support new animal welfare legislation that is being developed in the context of the European Commission’s Farm to Fork Strategy.