Robert L. Buchanan¹ and Sherri Dennis^1
1U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition

This document served as a background paper for the Joint FAO/WHO Consultation held in Kiel, Germany on March 18-22, 2002. It discusses FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN)'s approach to microbial risk assessment, outlines CFSAN's measures to involve interested parties in the risk assessment process, and discusses lessons learned by CFSAN regarding:

1. Commissioning a risk assessment
2. Interaction between risk managers and risk assessors during the conduct of a risk assessment
3. Acquiring input from interested parties
4. Peer review, and
5. Reporting the results