Food surveillance activities produce valuable safety-related data under the responsibility of many stakeholders in the food chain but are often under-exploited. The optimisation of surveillance systems at national level is expected in the framework of the French law for the future of Agriculture, implementing an epidemiological surveillance Platform. In the food safety sector, this project is being built step by step through consultations with the different stakeholders. This paper summarises the results of these consultations organised by the Directorate General for Food since the end of 2015; it describes the fundamental elements of an epidemiological surveillance approach on which future work can be based.