Food Standard Food Safety Risk Assessment

This course will give an introduction into the principles behind food safety hazard and risk assessment as well as the different existing national and international systems for food safety, food control and food standard setting. It will provide background on the current approaches and systems in place and stimulate discussion on how these need to evolve to keep pace with new and novel food innovations whilst meeting the needs of industry and regulatory safety assessors. The increasing globalisation of the food trade, changing consumption patterns, the intensifi cation of agriculture, increasing travel and tourism, and new types of production and manufacturing systems are just some of the trends that are having a serious impact on food production and food safety in many countries. At the same time, several existing and new food safety hazards are of increasing concern and new pathogens are frequently emerging and being transferred from animal to human populations, primarily through food. These new challenges need to be addressed are best dealt with in new safety and regulatory frameworks and approaches; these frameworks and their background will be explained and described.

Major theoretical topics of the course include:

New/novel ingredient/food assessment

Food hazard - chemical and microbiological hazards; food allergy

Food toxicity - food additives

Risk management - GMP and HACCP for food hygiene and safety regulation

Risk assessment, the science part of risk analysis