The US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have introduced a new tool that will help scientists improve the quality of data that is used to safeguard consumers from pathogen-related risks in food and water.
The tool, a Microbial Risk Assessment (MRA) Guideline, was jointly developed with EPA as a public health collaborative project.
USDA Food Safety Under Secretary Elisabeth Hagen said the new tool will help public health scientists target pathogen-related risks and prevent them from harming the public.
"We will continue to enhance the tools at our disposal to keep pace with evolving pathogens in our environment with the ultimate goal of protecting the American public and the food supply," Hagen added.
The MRA Guideline lays out an approach for conducting meaningful assessments of the risks to consumers posed by pathogen exposure. MRA procedures outlined in the document follow a user-friendly, question-and-answer format that assists risk assessors in developing microbial risk assessments to meet agency-specific needs.
The FSIS noted that the document provides a microbial risk assessment by providing comprehensive, specific and descriptive information for developing assessments of the risk in food and water.
