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New Resource to Help Protect Consumers from Pathogen Risks in Food and Water |
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Congressional and Public Affairs
Neil Gaffney
(202) 720-9113
WASHINGTON, July 31, 2012 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today unveiled a new tool that will help scientists improve the quality
of data collected and used to protect 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.
"This new tool will help public health scientists target pathogen-related risks and prevent them from harming the public," USDA
Under Secretary for Food Safety Dr. Elisabeth Hagen said. "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."
"This project contributes significantly to improving the quality and consistency in the way that participating federal agencies conduct
microbial risk assessments, and provides greater transparency to stakeholders and other interested parties in how these agencies approach and
conduct their microbial risk assessments," said EPA Science Advisor Dr. Glenn Paulson. "Based on the success of this project, we are
seeking further opportunities to combine our technical expertise in our continuing efforts to protect the public's health."
Pathogens in food, water, and the environment can result in acute gastrointestinal-related illnesses and some can have long-term and permanent
health effects as well as fatalities. In addition, the source of pathogens is the same for water and food. Recognizing this, the MRA Guideline
lays out an overarching approach for conducting meaningful assessments of the risks to consumers posed by pathogen exposure. MRA procedures
discussed 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.
Formal risk assessments for food-, water-, and environmentally-relevant chemicals have been undertaken for decades; however, an overarching
microbial risk assessment guideline has not been available until now. The document announced today meets this need by providing comprehensive,
specific and descriptive information for developing assessments of microbial risk in food and water.
FSIS has posted the MRA Guideline on its Web page at http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Science/
Microbial_Risk_Assessment_Guideline/index.asp.
EPA has posted the MRA Guideline on its Web page at http://www.epa.gov/raf/microbial.htm.
The MRA Guideline will also be available to download at www.regulations.gov beginning July 31, 2012.
Today's action is in addition to other significant public health measures FSIS has put in place during President Barack Obama's Administration
to date to safeguard the food supply, prevent foodborne illness, and improve consumers' knowledge about the food they eat. These initiatives
support the three core principles developed by the President's Food Safety Working Group: prioritizing prevention; strengthening surveillance
and enforcement; and improving response and recovery. Some of these actions include:
- Test-and-hold policy that will significantly reduce consumer exposure to unsafe meat products,
should the policy become final, because products cannot be released into commerce until Agency test results for dangerous contaminants are known.
- Labeling requirements that provide better information to consumers about their food by requiring
nutrition information for single-ingredient raw meat and poultry products and ground or chopped products.
- Public Health Information System, a modernized, comprehensive database with information on public
health trends and food safety violations at the nearly 6,100 plants FSIS regulates.
- Performance standards for poultry establishments for continued reductions in the occurrence of
pathogens. After two years of enforcing the new standards, FSIS estimates that approximately 5,000 illnesses will be prevented each year under
the new Campylobacter standards, and approximately 20,000 illnesses will be prevented under the revised Salmonella standards each year.
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Last Modified: July 31, 2012 |
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