Symposium: Peer Review of Risk Assessments and Related Activities

Meeting Presentations

Place: USDA/APHIS, 4700 River Rd, Riverdale, MD 

Date: September 30, 2003

Contact:
Janell Kause at 202-690-6424 or e-mail: janell.kause@fsis.usda.gov
Mary Bartholomew at 301-827-0230 or e-mail: mary.bartholomew@fda.gov

Cost: Free, no pre-registration required

Meeting Sponsors:
Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Society for Risk Analysis, and the Interagency Risk Assessment Consortium.

Objectives of symposium

Federal agencies rely on peer review to ensure that the science and risk assessments used to inform decision-making meet high standards. OMB’s recently released bulletin[1] provides additional proposed guidance on peer review to supplement Executive Order 12866.[2] This proposal outlines general criteria for agencies to consider when conducting peer reviews, including that agency peer reviews be objective, transparent, reliable and independent. Further consideration must be given to the “lesson learned” in conducting peer reviews and to the issues associated with criteria for peer reviews.

The objective of this symposium is to share information and thoughts and opinions on all aspects of regulatory peer review among academia, industry, consumers and government. This information will be used by the Interagency Risk Assessment Consortium Peer Review Workgroup to develop a concept paper on recommended application and procedures for conducting peer review that can be used by federal agencies. The paper will be posted on the JIFSAN Food Safety Risk Analysis Clearinghouse website.

The symposium will include a discussion of the elements of a successful program for regulatory (agency) peer review of risk assessments and other documents requiring federal peer review. Participants will focus on identifying the key issues to be considered when implementing a peer review process for these documents. The role of data quality guidelines in peer review will also be presented.

Presentations will seek to clarify:

  1. what regulatory peer review is and how it relates to other types of peer reviews
  2. srengths and limitations of currently available regulatory peer review procedures
  3. requirements of peer reviews from the federal perspective

Discussion and panel members will explore issues including:

  1. Why to have such programs
  2. How to initiate and manage peer review programs
  3. What activities and products a peer review program is responsible for (What kinds of results may be expected? What are some of the pitfalls?)
  4. Who carries out each activity (Who should organize the review? Who should develop the charge to reviewers? Who should the reviewers be? etc.) and
  5. Which kinds of work products will usefully go through peer review?

There will be an opportunity provided for audience comments.

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[1] Peer Review and Information Quality Proposed Bulletin and Request for Comment, August 29, 2003, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/inforeg/infopoltech.html#dq

[2] “Regulatory Planning and Review”, October 4, 1993, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/inforeg/eo12866.pdf