Complementary to the recognition and rapid resolution of food-borne disease outbreaks are strategies to minimise the chances of food-borne disease occurring at all. The reasons for food-borne outbreaks are myriad, however, and can arise not only during food processing and food-service, and also on-farm, in distribution, or in consumer’s homes.
Increasingly, new regulations (even for public health protection) are being resisted and many jurisdictions now require science-based justification of the benefit-vs-cost of introduction of new regulations. Additionally, the cost of implementation and assurance that food safety management strategies are being implanted is high, and limited, so that food safety managers usually have to identify the ‘best’ strategies that produce the greatest benefit for least cost to producers and consumers. But identification of the ‘best’ option requires systematic and knowledge-based analysis to identify what could go wrong, and how bad the consequences would be, so as to identify strategies to minimise the probability that the worst-cases could happen.
This presentation will briefly describe food safety risk assessment methods, including stochastic simulation models that are being applied nationally and internationally. Examples of decisions, and decision-support systems, for food-safety management based on risk assessments will be included.