Page 340 - Biosystems Engineering

Food Safety Management 317

method of quantifying risks to both the human and animal popula-
tions and as a valuable tool for policy makers.
With the emergence of more resilient strains of bacteria, risk
assessment plays a large role in ensuring the safety of our food and
food products as consumers become increasingly conscious of emerg-
ing health problems. Risk assessment models can be used to test sce-
narios and, by doing so, allow some insight into the underlying
dynamics of a pathogen and associated risk. This can lead to further
understanding of the pathogen and enable further—and much
needed—research and development in the area. Risk assessment mod-
eling of food-manufacturing processes for the agrifood industry will
bring to prominence any deficiencies in the process while highlighting
areas of potential health risk. It is often the case that modeling exer-
cises bring to light important deficiencies in the available body of
knowledge (Martin et al. 1987). Risk assessment models can also be
used to demonstrate the importance of the missing data and direct
data-collection efforts. Model building can be an important means of
generating and formalizing hypothesis (Hurd and Kaneene 1993).
Risk assessment provides a measure of risk to consumers while
accounting for uncertainty and variability in data measurements and
knowledge. The result of a risk assessment is to estimate the level of
risk to risk managers. The purpose of risk assessment is not to estab-
lish a safe level of risk; this responsibility lies with risk managers.
Should the level of risk be deemed to be unacceptable by the risk
managers, then a risk-minimization strategy needs to be implemented
to minimize or eliminate the risk (Buchanan 2002).
Risk assessment can be used to assess alternative strategies and to
evaluate the impact of policy decisions. One of the advantages of risk
assessment is that multiple scenarios can be created and evaluated.
Risk managers need to decide which control strategy is appropriate,
in addition to a multitude of other factors, including cost, acceptability,
and ethical issues. The evaluation of strategies is the responsibility of
the risk managers.
The advantage of quantitative risk assessment is that it is able to
describe complex biological systems, including the growth and
development of pathogens and the resulting human exposure. This
results in an improved understanding of pathogen dynamics with an
extensive documentation of the pathogenic characteristics and their
potential exposure pathways. Ross and McMeekin (2003) discuss the
application of predictive microbiology within quantitative microbial
food safety risk assessment. Predictive microbiology provides data
on the likely growth rate of microbial pathogens within a food sub-
strate (USDA/ARS 1999). Only when microbial growth dynamics are
assessed can a clearer picture of possible risks be evaluated (Coleman
and Marks 1999). Major food safety systems such as HACCP and risk
assessment are now underpinned by predictive microbiology
(McMeekin 2007; McMeekin et al. 2002).