Microbial Risk Ranking as “a web-based decision support system” tool [Conference Paper]

Gopaiah Talari, Cronan McNamara, Enda Cummins, Rajat Nag, Kostas Koutsoumanis, John O'Brien

Presented at the 36th EFFoST International Conference 2022, Dublin

07/11/2022

Microbial Risk Ranking as “a web-based decision support system” tool [Conference Paper]

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Microbial Risk Ranking as “a web-based decision support system” tool [Conference Paper]

WHO estimates that more than 23 million people fall ill from eating contaminated food with bacteria, viruses, and parasitic protozoa in the European region every year, resulting in 4,654 deaths and more than 400,000 DALYs. Reducing these numbers has proven challenging because of the complex European food supply chain system and thousands of firms that provide consumers with hundreds of billions of euros worth of food each year. Moreover, this system is constantly in flux due to changing consumption patterns, the development of new products, and increasingly globalised food supply chains. In a food safety system, decisions about food-borne risks from various products must be made consistently to minimise foodborne illness, reduce risks, and maximise benefits while also considering the cost of illness. The microbial risk ranking model, a web-based decision-support tool, will be developed to rank the most hazardous pathogen and food combinations to translate an academic understanding of the factors affecting the growth or inactivation of a pathogen in a specific food throughout the farm to fork scenario to estimate the final risk. It incorporates the disease-causing pathogen and properties of food, the influence of temperature change on pathogen growth and concentration at each stage of the supply chain, consumption patterns and the size and vulnerabilities of the populations affected, and economic factors to calculate the disease burden. In particular, the tool was intended to make the techniques of food safety risk assessment more accessible to non-experts in this field as an educational tool to assist in understanding the process of microbial food safety risk assessment. Furthermore, the tool helps teach the principles of risk assessment concerning food safety and highlights factors contributing to food safety risk. The tool also can be used by risk managers and others without extensive experience in microbial risk assessment or modelling and as a simple and quick means to develop the first estimate of relative risk. It can also be used as a training and risk communication aid to help determine data needs.

Authors: Gopaiah Talari, Cronan McNamara, Enda Cummins, Rajat Nag, Kostas Koutsoumanis, John O’Brien

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