Growing Concerns of
Food Safety
As a further consequence,
the safety of our food is being increasingly scrutinized and questioned
by the public, as food-borne illnesses are significant, costly, and a global
problem. There continue to be differences of opinion on how to improve food
safety, where industry lacks an integrated and holistic strategy for
implementation of food safety in developed world as well as much of the world. Even
though, we acknowledge some success in controlling and ameliorating food-borne
illnesses and food contamination, these achievements are uneven, often
transitory, and especially difficult. Ensuring a safe food supply will likely
demand new levels of collaboration, understanding, and thinking. The application
of potential solutions is to be viewed and delivered more holistically and with
an emphasis on prevention is a compelling and timely strategy.
Thus
continuing from the last week’s stop, it is basically needs following segments
for better understanding of the subject. However, risk assessments are basically
carryout for other requirements are slightly deviated from other assessments,
i.e. risk assessment for ISO 9001:2015 due to the importance of food safety
hazards which bit different in nature and complex in assessment. Sometimes,
risk assessments lead to change composition of the food or way it was prepared
due to the risk assessment’s outcome. Thus following topics are necessary to
understand in-depth to better cater with continuously upgrading dynamics of
food safety in the market.
Hazard
Identification
For
each of the hazard: product pairings you identified in a table, you now look
for:
Links with
confirmed food-borne illnesses both in your country and in importing countries;
search the published literature and any national health statistics;
International
food-borne disease outbreaks;
Recalls monitored
by food authorities in importing countries.
When
you put all this information together you will have some idea of the food
safety relevance of the hazard: product pairing. At this stage you will be in a
position to verify whether a particular hazard: product pairing is sufficiently
important to remain in the risk profile. If it has not caused any problems,
then you can use your resources more accurately on other pairings. For example,
you may decide not to include parasitic worms in your risk profile because all
finfish you export are frozen fillets and freezing kills the parasites. In other
words, there are critical control points (freezing and frozen storage) that
eliminate the hazard and, with it, the risk. This will get you started on your
risk profiles but you should update the information by searching the sources
recommended above.
Hazard
Characterization
Hazard
characterization is composed of inter-relationships, which are summarized in
this simple diagram
The
three main areas for consideration – the pathogen/toxin, the host and the food
matrix – all combine to make hazard characterization a very complex part of
risk assessment. The simplest way of thinking about hazard characterization is
to consider what happens whenever there is large-scale food poisoning. In
general, only a proportion of consumers become ill, of whom a much smaller
proportion may die.
Why doesn't everyone become ill and why do not all those affected die? The reasons
are many and complex.
Exposure Assessment
For
any component in our diet, exposure to a disease-causing agent (toxin or
microorganism) in that component depends on three factors:
The level of the
agent in the meal;
The amount we eat
(serving size);
The frequency with
which people consume that component.
Comparisons
show a 500-times difference in potential exposure, based only on mass consumed.
In fact, assessing exposure is rather more complicated because there are
usually a large number of other factors to consider such as:
Frequency of
contamination (prevalence) with toxin or pathogen;
Changes in level of
contamination through the marketing chain;
Seasonal effects;
Consumption
patterns;
Susceptibility of
consumer;
Preparation
effects.
There
are examples of how to do the work needed under exposure assessment. This is
the part of a risk assessment where you need to do much investigative work. The
better the exposure assessment, the more valid will be your risk estimate.
Availability of local data is very important for exposure assessment.
Risk
Characterization
Risk
characterizations use statistics to determine which hazard pose the highest
risks. The numerical results represent an estimated probability, similar to the
probability of a coin landing heads up (a one in two chance). The numbers help
scientists and regulators, but the size and scale are often hard to relate to
everyday life, while these numbers are slightly different from risk estimates,
they add perspective to the scale of the risk numbers. On the other hand,
personal habits and other factors can influence a person's actual risk.
In
risk characterization, all previous information from hazard identification,
exposure assessment and hazard characterization are brought together to give a
picture of the risk. The picture is an estimate of how many people become ill,
and how seriously ill they become, if a specific pathogen is in the product.
This is called the risk estimate. If a qualitative risk assessment has been
done, the risk estimate will be a simple statement that the risk is high or low
or medium. If it is a quantitative risk assessment, the risk estimate will be a
number, such as predicted illnesses per annum in the population, or the
probability of becoming ill from eating a serving of the product. Do not forget
that the main reason for doing risk assessments is so that risk managers can
use the output – the risk estimates in the characterization. Therefore, the
managers need to know whether there is uncertainty and variability in your
estimate.
A good example of the effect these two
properties are shown by the Lindqvist and Westöö (2000) study on smoked and
gravid trout in Sweden. They estimated the number of annual cases by two dose
response models. Method one predicted a mean of 168 cases and a range of 47–2
800 cases. Method two predicted a mean of 95 000 cases with a range of 34 000–1
600 000. The ranges reflect the uncertainty built into the predictions, and the
authors list the data that should be collected to make more accurate
predictions. Another output in the risk characterization that is invaluable for
risk managers is a sensitivity analysis. This analysis ranks the influence that
each parameter has on the risk. Some factors increase the likelihood of
occurrence of illness while others decrease it. Lindqvist and Westöö found that
the probability of becoming ill after eating smoked or gravid fish was most
affected by:
Prevalence of
contamination (percentage of servings contaminated);
Serving size (the
more you eat the more likely you are to become ill);
Proportion of
virulent strains of L. monocytogenes.
These
findings help the risk manager to focus on areas that should receive priority
action. If the assessors identify uncertainty within these areas, the managers
may decide to invest in studies to obtain better data and reduce the
uncertainty.
Some
risk assessments present the sensitivity analysis as a chart with bars
representing the extent of the impact each parameter has on risk. A typical
chart is shown below, and because of its shape it is usually called a “Tornado
chart”; each bar refers to a particular property that is correlated either with
increased or decreased risk.
Accuracy of Risk
Estimates
Due
to variables and unknown factors, it is impossible to accurately estimate risk.
When available, data from human exposure is used to estimate risk. But in many
cases, scientists do not have all of the details on actual exposures or how a
hazard harms human health, where dose-response factors, or toxicity, are based
on studies done on animals or cells, not actual human exposure are used.
Furthermore, risk estimations sometimes use computer models to calculate the
effects of hazard exposure when actual studies are not available. On the other
hand, results between different studies are not always consistent. When this
happens, you need to choose the most accurate and health-protective study, but
you never should underestimate the real risk.
Reality check
Whether
you do a qualitative or quantitative risk assessment you must do a reality
check and compare your predictions of annual illness with statistics kept by
country’s Health Department.
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