Quantitative risk assessment
Foodborne infections and intoxications are still a major cause of illness, hospitalisation, and even death. While it is impossible to eliminate these risks completely, the goal within the research theme, Quantitative risk assessment, is to design smart interventions and well-designed food safety management systems to bring the risks down significantly.
Food safety management is continuously developing. Initially, food safety was mainly checked by testing the final product and by applying basic hygiene rules, known as Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). Later, the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system was introduced. This makes food safety more structured by identifying key points in the production chain where safety can be built in and controlled.
Quantitative risk assessment
Nowadays, food producers use so-called quantitative risk assessment (QRA), a method to calculate risks more precisely, based on more solid information. It consists of four steps:
- Hazard identification: identifying which microbes or toxins are relevant.
- Hazard characterisation – estimating the danger (probability and severity of the response), depending on the dose consumed.
- Exposure assessment – estimating to what extent consumers are exposed to the hazard.
- Risk characterisation – combining the results of the first three steps to calculate the actual risk.
From a public health perspective, the outcome of QRA can help define an Appropriate Level of Protection (ALOP). This can be translated into Food Safety Objectives (FSOs): practical criteria for products and processes at different stages of the food chain. FSOs can then be implemented through HACCP.
Difficulties
Although risk assessment supplies large amounts of data, the difficulties with these are:
- Accuracy and uncertainty: data are often incomplete or imprecise. Yet, working with the best available information is better than relying only on qualitative guesses or waiting for perfect data that may never come.
- Interpretation: analyses can be mathematically complex, making them hard to understand, even for experts. Better ways to communicate results are needed so risk managers can use them effectively.
What research contributes
To carry out strong QRAs, we need to extent our knowledge. We need to study quantitative microbiology to model growth, inactivation and recontamination. We furthermore require detection methods to monitor and verify processes. Finally, we need the use of epidemiology and ecology. Based on these insights, we aim to design appropriate interventions that lower risks without being too costly or harming taste and nutritional value.
Our main goals
Taken together, our work in this research theme has three main goals:
- Develop quantitative models that describe microbial growth, inactivation, and recontamination.
- Creating practical tools that give clear, quantitative answers to food safety questions. For this we combine the quantitative models with databases.
- Improving the field of "analysis of risk analysis": how to carry out the risk assessment and how to present the results.
Research themes
Food fermentation
We explore how microbes shape the taste, safety and quality of fermented foods and aim to improve starter cultures to optimise control of food fermentation.
Quantitative Risk Assessment
We study how to predict and reduce risks from harmful microbes in food. We determine intelligent interventions and good food safety management systems to reduce foodborne infections.
Quantitative Ecology of Pathogens
We aim to understand how foodborne pathogens successfully survive in food and food environments and how they transit to a host.
Physiology and Genomics
Using genomics and physiology, we study stress responses, biofilms and spores at population and single-cell level. These data help design smarter preservation methods and improve food safety.