Microbial food safety risk assessment

Abstract Microbial food safety risk assessment (MRA) is a systematic approach to translate the potential presence of pathogens in the food production, processing, and preparation environments into statements of the likelihood and magnitude of a food safety risk, in terms of adverse public health outcomes. Based on guidance as, for example, offered by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, methods for performing MRA have been developed in the past decades. Despite the frequent lack of required data and the challenges of the methodology, MRA is widely applied to support decision-making in microbial food safety and to aid our understanding of complex food systems. Its added value in the support of food safety control has been demonstrated clearly. This chapter outlines the concepts of MRA methods and the progress made by their application. It also describes current challenges, including the integration of new types of data, such as sequencing data, and the need for harmonization of MRA models to facilitate the integration and exchange of the knowledge built up in the past decennia.