Role of epidemiology in microbial risk assessment

Abstract

Microbial risk assessment (MRA) is a systematic tool to evaluate the likelihood of exposure to food-borne pathogens and the resulting impact of exposure on consumer health. In addition, MRA can be used to evaluate the public health impact of intervention or control measures designed to prevent or reduce pathogens at any or all of the steps in our complex food production system. Epidemiological studies provide useful information and data for MRA. This paper discusses the use and limitations of epidemiological data in the development and validation of MRA using examples from published microbial risk assessments.

Keywords:

• microbial risk assessment
• epidemiology
• hazard identification
• hazard characterization
• exposure assessment
• risk characterization