At a Workshop held in Aussois, France (OECD, 1997), it was recognised that a consistent approach to the establishment of substantial equivalence might be improved through consensus on the appropriate components (e.g. key nutrients, key toxicants and anti-nutritional compounds) on a crop-by-crop basis, which should be considered in the comparison. It is recognised that the components may differ from crop to crop. The Task Force therefore decided to develop Consensus Documents on phenotypic characteristics and compositional data. These data are used to identify similarities and differences following a comparative approach as part of a food and feed safety assessment. They should be useful to the development of guidelines, both national and international and to encourage information sharing among OECD member countries.