This presentation was part of the International Symposium on Revolution in Food Safety Management held in Bali, Indonesia on February 13-15, 2008. This presentation illustrates examples of equivalent food chain systems from the dairy sector perspective and a description of microbiological metrics.

HACCP plan adoption has greatly enhanced the food industry's ability to systematically design programs to ensure the microbiological safety of foods. Yet, this widening acceptance of the HACCP system has revealed several areas where its application is limited due to reliance on qualitative consideration of hazards and their control. In particular, HACCP planning is limited both conceptually and practically by its inability to quantify the potential combined influence of multiple control-point deviations and to relate the successful operation of a HACCP system to a measurable public-health impact. Recent advances in quantitative microbiological risk assessment appear to offer a means of overcoming these limitations. The integration of HACCP plans with the development of dynamic risk-assessment models offers a means for considering the entire farm-to-table continuum and for relating food-manufacturing operations to public health goals. Such capabilities may be critical to establishing equivalence among HACCP systems.

This presentation was part of the 2010 Food Safety Research Consortium Workshop: Assuring Safety of Imported Food. This slides cover food safety requirements for foods in international trade, the history of international microbiological criteria and a new risk management metrics vocabulary.

This website includes a brief explanation on food safety risk management, a report and case studies on the use of microbiological risk assessment outputs to develop practical risk management strategies and related publications.

The aim of this Technical Consultation on Biological Risk Management in Food and Agriculture, was to protect better human, animal and plant life and health without creating unjustified barriers to trade.

Background information on the evolving concept of Biosecurity for food and agriculture was presented as a guidance to develop national and international rules, regulations and standards that are acceptable to all parties, and can be applied in a transparent and fair manner. 

This report summarises the results of presentations and discussions at the scientific workshop “Using Microbiological Risk Assessment (MRA) in Food Safety Management”, organised by ILSI Europe in collaboration with the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP).

This workshop was convened in Prague (Czech Republic) on 12–14 October 2005. The aim was to explore the practical utility and validity of MRAs developed in different contexts in more depth and, where possible, to establish learnings and useful practices that can guide future developments. This document may also be found here.

This article evaluates the proposed definition of Food Safety Objectives (FSOs) and their implementation from the perspective of Quantitative Microbiological Risk Assessment (QMRA). The relationship between QMRA and FSOs is illustrated by a model for the public health risk of Shiga-toxin producing Escherichia coli in steak tartare. The authors concluded that the proposed definition of FSOs needs to be modified to properly account for variability in and uncertainty about the contamination of food with pathogenic microorganisms and emphasize that both prevalence and concentration of pathogens must be considered. For this purpose, the authors proposed the P-D equivalence curve, a simple graphical tool to separate "tolerable" from "non-tolerable" combinations of prevalence and concentration (dose).

This report considers some tools available for food safety management and outlines a framework for their interaction and use. Some of the tools described are HACCP, GMP, GHP, Risk Analysis and Total Quality Management.

Although the primary focus of this report is on microbiological issues, the general principles addressed by the report are equally applicable to the management of chemical and physical contaminants.

Continuing this series, Microorganisms in Foods 7 describes the role of microbiological testing in modern food safety management systems. It explores how risk assessment and risk management can be used to establish goals - known as "tolerable levels of risk" or "food safety objectives" - for use in controlling foodborne illness, and provides guidelines for establishing effective management systems to control specific hazards in foods. It describes the respective roles of industry and government, recognizing that it is through their collective actions that effective food safety systems are developed and verified, and helps countries determine whether imported foods have been produced with an equivalent level of protection.

This report is a further elaboration of the risk analysis process. The interaction of risk managers and risk assessors is considered in detail. This document is intended to build upon the foundation for risk analysis and risk assessment established by the joint FAO and WHO Consultation Reports and the documents produced by the Codex Alimentarius Commission.

The purpose of this document is to provide guidance to government agencies and industries for the establishment of food safety objectives and control measures to ensure the safety of food. Food safety objectives can serve a useful function in food safety management by linking information from the risk assessment and risk management processes with the establishment of effective control measures.

This report describes food safety control concepts, specifically food safety management and Food Safety Objectives (FSO). This report also briefly describes food safety management systems such as Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP), and the pre-requisite systems Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and Good Hygiene Practice (GHP), and the relationship between FSO's and food control.

This document served as a background paper for the Joint FAO/WHO Consultation held in Kiel, Germany on March 18-22, 2002. It discusses the use of quantitative risk assessment in evaluating and comparing options for risk management