Data Collection for International Microbial Food Safety Risk Assessments
Goal
To develop strategies and priorities for the collection of microbial food safety data that can be used for national and international risk assessments, particularly in developing countries.
Project Rationale
The FAO/WHO Joint Expert Committee for Microbial Risk Assessment (JEMRA) is undertaking international risk assessments for Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella spp. and other pathogenic microorganisms. At present, data for these risk assessments come mainly from North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, as they are not always available from other regions of the world, particularly developing countries. ILSI believes that use of country-specific data will result in risk assessments that are more relevant and useful than those which do not use country-specific data, particularly when collecting data for exposure assessment or epidemiological food attribution.
There is a need for capacity building in developing countries, both in how to do microbial food safety risk assessments, and on the types of data needed to ensure that the risk assessments are meaningful. Data needs for microbial risk assessments include exposure, dose-response, and epidemiological data sets. Exposure data needs include the frequency of occurrence of specific pathogens on foods and the number of pathogens on a specific food, both at the time of consumption and at earlier points in the food chain. In addition, data are needed on the frequency of consumption and amount of food consumed per meal. Dose-response data include information derived from intensive human epidemiological outbreak investigations, animal studies, or cell culture models. Epidemiological data include information derived from case-control and cohort studies from foodborne illness outbreaks, which can be used to attribute illnesses to specific foods and to identify the age and health status of exposed consumers.
Approach
In March 2004, RSI established an Advisory Committee on Data Collection for Microbial Risk Assessment, with representatives from WHO, FAO, Government agencies, academics and ILSI branches worldwide. The mission of the committee is to provide advice to ILSI on data needs and data collection approaches for undertaking microbial food safety risk assessments, and how data collection can be used in building capacity in microbial risk assessment in developing countries.
Current Status of Project
The Advisory Committee recommended development of a Framework for identification and collection of data useful for microbial risk assessments that could be used by national governments worldwide. The committee developed an outline for the document, which is currently being written. The document will include specific information on how governments can use existing data, and what types of new data may need to be generated. The document will list both the minimum and the optimum data sets needed for MRA, focusing on data to determine burden of foodborne and waterborne disease, contamination of food/water and food consumption patterns.