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A bulletin for the Australian Food Industry    November 2002

Contents: Listeria in ready-to-eat foods | Effect of common sanitisers on Listeria monocytogenes | National Risk Validation Project | Validation of food safety control measures

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National Risk Validation Project

In 2001-2002, the NSW Department of Health and the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing funded a National Risk Validation Project. The aim of the project was to identify potentially high risk food industry sectors and to use risk assessment principles to validate the categorisation selected sectors as high risk. The report of this project is now publicly available .

The project was undertaken in two parts. The first part was the risk validation step conducted by Food Science Australia only. The second part was a cost-benefit exercise conducted by Minter Ellison Consulting only. This second part had two objectives:
  1. to determine the potential cost to the nation of foodborne illness associated with high risk food industries, and
  2. to determine the costs and benefits of implementing food safety programs in high risk food industry sectors.

Risk validation
The Food Science Australia component involved reviewing epidemiological data from local and overseas sources to identify those food businesses, and operations associated with those businesses, which are consistently associated with foodborne illness outbreaks. The descriptors used by the World Health Organization to describe major factors contributing to foodborne illness outbreaks are used throughout the report.

These are: temperature misuse, inadequate handling, inadequate environment and raw material.

Process failure was a fifth factor added to these to encompass the range of food businesses under review.

The study took Australian data on foodborne illness from Commonwealth and State sources and compared it with overseas data in terms of food operations which contribute foodborne hazards. The three most frequently encountered hazards based on all the material reviewed are:
  • temperature misuse – this incorporates all forms of faulty temperature control of hazardous foods.
  • inadequate handling – various forms of cross contamination but often poor worker hygiene.
  • contaminated raw material.

A review of food businesses associated with these major hazards permitted a preliminary classification of potentially high risk businesses.

Australian epidemiological data of reported foodborne illness in the last 10 years was then revisited to refine the preliminary risk assessment of business categories. Three factors from this data were taken into account:
  1. food operation
  2. probability/frequency of illness in terms of amount of food consumed
  3. severity of illness.
When these factors are given numerical weightings and those weightings combined, the food businesses which rank as high risk in order of priority are:
  1. foodservice for sensitive populations
  2. producers, harvesters, processors and vendors of raw ready-to-eat seafood
  3. catering operations serving food to the general population
  4. eating establishments
  5. producers of manufactured and fermented meats.
Other businesses ranked as high risk but at a level below the above were:
  • processed raw foods not treated listericidally by heat
  • processed foods treated listericidally by heat but subject to potential recontamination during subsequent handling
  • vegetables in oil

Due to the relative absence of Australian data, it was not possible to include this second rank grouping in the analysis of costs of foodborne disease. Nor was it possible to include them in the cost benefit analysis of food safety programs.

Food Safety and Hygiene
Prepared by Keith Richardson and Rachel Jackson
Food Science Australia
PO Box 52, North Ryde 1670. Tel +61 2 9490 8397 Fax +61 2 9490 8499
Email enquiries@csiro.au