With the new FSMA legislation coming into law, regulatory agencies and processors alike are trying to develop risk-prioritization models to identify high-risk foods and facilities to make informed resource allocations. The starting point for implementing risk-based food safety systems is being able to identify where the greatest food safety problems lie, says Michael Batz, co-author of the report, Managing the Risks: The 10 Pathogen-Food Combinations With the Greatest Burden on Public Health, from the Emerging Pathogens Institute (EPI) at the University of Florida. Batz is head of food safety programs for EPI. Sandra Hoffmann and Glenn Morris, Jr. are the other co-authors.
To provide a means of comparing the risks posed by different pathogen-food combinations in the US, the authors developed a comparable set of estimates of disease burden for 14 leading pathogens across 12 food categories (168 pathogen-food combinations). The 14 pathogens represent more than 95 percent of the annual illnesses and hospitalizations, and almost 98 percent of the deaths, estimated by CDC due to 31 foodborne pathogens. For each pathogen, the report’s authors estimate health impacts in monetary cost of illness and loss of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), a measure of health-related quality of life. These numbers allowed the authors to extrapolate several other metrics that are useful in risk considerations.