Microbiological Risk Assessment: Types and Applications

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Microbiological Risk Assessment: Types and Applications

October 19, 2024 by Manisha Ghimire

The process to understand how pathogenic organisms can get into the food and cause health problems is called microbiological risk assessment.

It involves the studying of various parts of the food system, from production to preparation, to assess the risk of illness associated with microbial contamination. Microbiological risk assessment is a useful tool for regulating and controlling the risks of foodborne pathogens. It serves as a foundation for food safety and helps to recognize the potential microbial hazards and adverse impacts of using contaminated foods with pathogens. Besides these, it can be useful in determining the potential strategic measures that lower possible microbial hazards and risks in food consumption.

Table of Contents

Risk Analysis

1. Risk Assessment

2. Risk Management

3. Risk communication

Types of Risk Assessment

Application of Microbiological Risk Assessment

Risk Analysis

Risk assessment is a crucial part of the overall risk analysis process, which includes three key components:

Risk assessment: Risk assessment helps to establish food safety standards, and sustainably helps in decision making. 

Risk management: Risk management helps to evaluate the potential risks and hazards to the specific groups and work in managerial options to reduce the risk.  

Risk communication: Risk communication makes sure that information related to risk assessment (potentiality, likelihood of impacts, limitations of risk) is understood by the risk assessors, managers, and stakeholders.

1. Risk Assessment

The way of identifying the possible risks and assessing the outcomes of any hazards is called risk assessment. The following steps are involved in the risk assessment. 

Hazard identification: Hazard identification is the initial stage which assists in the recognizing of microorganisms which is present in specific foods/or procedures that are hazardous and bear risk with negative health impacts. It offers the details of the:

Diseases induced (acute versus chronic), 

Ways of microbes damage the host 

Sensitive populations are likely targeted (children, pregnant women, people with compromised immunity power, etc.)

It doesn’t only identify the threat but also includes information about how, when, where, and how it may affect human health. 

Hazard characterization: Hazard characterization is associated with both qualitative and quantitative assessment of the degree and duration of negative health consequences that could arise from consuming a particular group of microorganisms or toxins byproducts in food. In brief, this stage establishes the connection between pathogens and the host (human) with its associated negative outcome. Here, the intensity of the health effect is taken into consideration. 

Exposure assessment: Exposure assessment is the qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the likelihood of microorganisms or a toxic byproduct in a food during ingestion. Exposure assessment incorporates the identification of the source, the route of exposure, and the pathogen occurrence to evaluate the extent and frequency of exposure to microbial pathogens and toxins. It encompasses the likelihood of exposure.

Risk characterization: Risk characterization is the final stage of microbial risk assessment which aims to estimate the likelihood and intensity of possible negative health impacts in the target group using both qualitative and quantitative methods. This combines dose-response and exposure assessment and computes the total probability of the health impact based on the above three steps hazard identification, hazard characterization, and exposure assessment. 

2. Risk Management

Risk management is a policy on which managerial actions can be formulated following the risk assessment approach with proper dose-response and exposure assessment. It involves various steps as:

Evaluation: In this stage, all the risks were identified and analyzed.

Management option assessment: The identified risks were prioritized based on risk rank associated with human health impacts.

Implementation of management decision: Based on prioritization and sensitization, proper strategic planning was formulated and implemented to reduce such risks. 

Monitoring and review: The implementing formulation was thoroughly monitored and reviewed on a regular basis. 

3. Risk communication

Risk communication is the process of exchanging information between the academician, researcher, managerial groups, and the public about the risk associated with microbial contamination. It involves the interactive exchange of information among risk assessors, risk managers, and stakeholders (public).

The process involved with Risk analysis

Figure: The process involved with Risk analysis. Source: Channaiah, 2022.

Types of Risk Assessment

The four types of risk assessment have been discussed below:

Qualitative: Qualitative risk assessments offer a subjective assessment of hazards/risks using pre-established standards. It helps in recognizing the possible consequences and probability of hazards/risks. This can be done through expert judgment, and risk ranking based on priority or severity. It can be used when there is deficit data or uncertain risk and offers a preliminary risk assessment and decision-making. 

Quantitative: Quantitative risk assessment offers numerical data to analyze the hazards/risks. It uses statistical and mathematical models to assess the probability and possible impact of risks. It can be used when there is enough data to get a better objective understanding of hazards. 

Subjective: Subjective risk assessment offers views and subjective judgment to assess the hazards/risks. It is only used when there is less accurate data or when there are challenges in risk quantification in an unbiased manner. It considers the opinions, viewpoints, and experiences and is useful for a qualitative overview of risks that can influence decision-making. 

Objective: Objective risk assessment offers quantifiable criteria and scientific evidence to reduce the subjectivity uncertainty. It uses statistics, historical data, mathematical models, and specified methodologies. It removes the bias and uncertainty of subjective assessment and contributes towards more accurate and verified knowledge of hazards/risks.

Prostate Cancer Risk Assessment

Prostate Cancer Risk Assessment

Application of Microbiological Risk Assessment

Microbiological Risk Assessment aims to address specific public health concerns.

Microbiological Risk Assessment is more effective to integrate in the decision-making process.

This enables one nation to apply alternative measures for food safety. 

Microbiological Risk Assessment can measure the hazards/risks across the process of production of food.  

Microbiological Risk Assessment helps to analyze the risks of the probability of food-borne illness. 

This assessment will fill the data gap and help future researchers.

Microbiological Risk Assessment helps to establish the proper plan and applicable policies to reduce microbial illness. 

Conclusion

Thus, microbiological risk assessment is one of the effective tools to quantify the harmful health impact caused by the microbes themselves or the toxins in foods. Besides this, it provides measures to build the regulatory frameworks to reduce the microbial health impacts. 

References

Channaiah, L. (2022, December 31). Microbiological risk assessment. https://www.qualityassurancemag.com/article/aib0614-microbiological-risk-assessment-tools/

Lammerding, A. (2013). Microbial Food Safety Risk Assessment. Foodborne Infections and Intoxications, 37–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-416041-5.00003-2

Magnússon, S. H., Gunnlaugsdóttir, H., van Loveren, H., Holm, F., Kalogeras, N., Leino, O., Luteijn, J. M., Odekerken, G., Pohjola, M. V., Tijhuis, M. J., Tuomisto, J. T., Ueland, Ø., White, B. C., & Verhagen, H. (2012). State of the art in benefit–risk analysis: Food microbiology. Food and Chemical Toxicology, 50(1), 33–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2011.06.005

McNicholas, J., & McNicholas, J. (2023, August 15). What are the 4 types of risk assessments. Evalu-8 Software Ltd – Human resources and health & safety software. https://evalu-8.com/ehs/what-are-the-4-types-of-risk assessments/