Battelle's unique software modeling program, PRIA, will soon be put to use in Australia to help manage the risk of salmonella and campylobacter outbreaks in poultry.
Baiada Poultry is one of Australia's largest poultry companies, providing products throughout the country. Battelle will customize the software for Baiada, which will integrate it into operations.
"A recent Consumer Reports investigation in the U.S. found contamination in 97 percent of the chicken it tested," said Battelle Research Leader Brian Hawkins. "Clearly it's a risk for the companies around the world trying to provide safe products, and to the consumer who wants to eat safe food."
Baiada's Anthony Pavic, Chief Scientific Officer and Regulatory Affairs Manager, said he believes PRIA is the right tool that will help improve on current methods. "PRIA will let us move away from spread sheets and let us perform high quality assessments that are quicker, more mathematically robust, and better documented for regulatory purposes."
PRIA, which stands for Probabilistic Risk Informed Analysis, is a software and modeling tool that allows food safety and defense professionals to proactively assess the effectiveness of mitigation strategies -- before an event occurs.
The software was inspired by concepts developed by Battelle. As part of its expertise in working on chemical and biological defense, scientists and engineers have worked to evaluate planned responses to incidents ranging from biological and chemical attacks in public gatherings to the purposeful contamination of a water supply.
PRIA uses powerful mathematical algorithms to perform rapid simulations that take into account all the variables involved in the process, down to the granular level in order to help pinpoint areas of risk.
While currently customized for the poultry processing industry, PRIA can be adapted to address other foods with common contamination concerns, such as those that occur in the leafy greens and beef industries. PRIA is an effective, quantitative software tool for food companies to align with future regulations calling for risk-based assessments, such as those anticipated in the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).
