IRAC Annual Plan (FY2011)

The May 1997 Food Safety Initiative report to the U.S. President recommended the establishment of an Interagency Risk Assessment Consortium (IRAC), comprising all federal agencies with food safety risk analysis responsibilities. The Risk Assessment Consortium enhances communication and coordination among federal agencies, and promotes the conduct of scientific research to inform risk assessments, thereby providing support for the regulatory agencies in fulfilling their food safety risk management mandates. Current membership includes 19 Federal agencies or sub-agencies. Each agency is represented by a technical and a policy council representative.

The IRAC serves as an interagency collaborative network, and accomplishes much of its goals through work groups. These work groups have goals and deliverables realized in form of workshops and meetings. The IRAC has expanded its range of issues addressed from microbial risk assessment in food, to chemical risk assessment, including water and the environment, and to ideas related to nutrients, nanotechnology, susceptible subpopulations, genomics and proteomics.

Goals of IRAC

The goals of IRAC as set forth in its charter are provided below:

Improve risk assessment research.
- Identify data gaps and critical research needs for food safety risk assessment.
- Reduce unnecessary research redundancies.
Enhance the development and use of risk assessment models and tools.
- Provide a forum to collaborate and share technical expertise in the development of interagency risk assessments.
- Identify and catalogue risk assessment reports, methods, models, and data sets.
- Provide advice and serve as a technical resource for member agencies; serve as a forum for the development of interagency risk assessment modeling approaches.
- Seek expertise from risk assessment professionals and scientists from the public and private sectors, academe, and consumer groups.
Serve as a forum to communicate about risk assessment and related research issues including enhancement of the use of quantitative risk assessment in the decision making regulatory process.

In 2011, IRAC will focus additional efforts to enhance the visibility of IRAC as an expert risk assessment body. Specific plans are noted below:

Technical / Policy Council Meetings

The Interagency Risk Assessment Consortium (IRAC) will continue holding technical quarterly meetings, where the technical representatives of the member agencies exchange risk assessment and risk assessment–related research information. The semi annual Policy Council meetings will also continue.

Quarterly Meeting Presentations

Continue presentations by agency representatives on current risk assessments and issues related to risk assessment, including rapid risk assessment. As requested by the presenting agency, provide peer review comments and suggestions for improving the risk assessment documents or models.
Invite presentations by other organizations, e.g., International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), JIFSAN, academia, industry, and consumer groups.

Work Group Projects

The IRAC accomplishes much of its work through work groups formed to address specific topics or issues. It encourages work groups to have a definite beginning and endpoint and that if needed additional work is identified that the technical representative should submit a proposal for a new workgroup. The proposed work group activities planned for 2011 are listed below.

New Work Groups

Norovirus. To explore research needs and data gaps to be filled, in order to facilitate a risk assessment of norovirus in foods and intervention strategies.
Risk Assessment as a Method for Determining Source Attribution to Foodborne Illness. This will be a joint IRAC - Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (IFSAC) workgroup.

Ongoing Work Groups

Susceptible Populations. Develop report for publication.
Listeria monocytogenes dose-response model. Hold workshop and symposium, prepare report for website.

Workshops / Meetings / Mini Symposia

Host a 1.5 day workshop on Dose Response for Listeria monocytogenes
Host a symposium at the Society for Risk Analysis meeting on Dose Response for Listeria monocytongenes
Host webinars and hold a workshop with the Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration to share information on use of risk assessment for determining source attribution to foodborne illness.