The Qualitative Risk Assessments course focuses on the skills needed to predict the likelihood of harm resulting from exposure to chemical, microbial and physical agents in the diet.
Our 2-day in classroom course introduces the range of risk assessment approaches across a wide spectrum of food safety hazards, providing hands-on experience with both qualitative and quantitative techniques.

Prequisite:While not required, it is recommended that this course be taken after you have completed the Introduction to Risk Analysis and the Regulatory Process and the Risk Management course. Those two courses provide contextual information about risk analysis that is not repeated here.

Overview of Topics

• Scientific Evaluation: Risk assessors rely on scientific principles and methodologies to evaluate potential hazards in the food supply chain.
• Qualitative Analysis: Risk assessors use both quantitative and qualitative methods to assess risks. Learn specific qualitative methods for assessing risk including food additive safety assessment, chemical risk assessment, microbiological risk assessment as well as several generic tools.
• Hazard Identification: Risk assessors are responsible for identifying all potential hazards associated with a particular food product or process. This includes biological, chemical, and physical hazards that may pose a threat to human health, if not properly managed.
• Exposure Assessment: Understanding how consumers are exposed to hazards is a critical aspect of risk assessment. Assessors determine how much of a hazardous substance may be present in food and how much of it is likely to be consumed by individuals. This involves considering factors such as consumption patterns and serving sizes.
• Toxicological Assessment: For chemical hazards, risk assessors conduct toxicological assessments to understand the adverse health effects associated with exposure to specific substances. This information is crucial for establishing safe exposure limits and guidelines.
• Uncertainty Analysis: Risk assessors acknowledge and quantify uncertainties associated with their assessments. This involves identifying data gaps, limitations in the available information, and variability in assumptions.

Learning Objectives

• Fundamental reasons for risk analysis
• Key developments in the role of risk assessment in international food safety
• Demonstrate familiarity with the wide range of formal definitions of risk assessment
• Differentiate variability and uncertainty in risk assessment
• Significance of uncertainty and variability to the Risk Assessor and Risk Manager
• Discuss the role of probability in quantitative risk assessment
• Identify several of the more frequently used probability distributions in risk assessment
• Understanding the differences between chemical and microbial risk assessment

By the end of the session, you should be able to

• Describe the fundamental reasons for doing risk analysis
• Identify key developments in the role of risk assessment in international food safety
• Define what screening and ranking tools are
• Rank a list of pathogens
• Demonstrate familiarity with the wide range of formal definitions of risk assessment and list the steps of the codex risk assessment definitions
• Build a simple event tree
• Differentiate variability and uncertainty in risk assessment
• List and discuss the steps in the basic approach to food safety assessment
• Identify at least three kinds of uncertainty than can be present in a risk assessment
• Discuss the significance of uncertainty and variability to the risk manager
• Discuss the role of probability in quantitative risk assessment
• Describe the differences between chemical and microbial risk assessment
• Identify aspects of bioterrorist risk assessment that distinguishes it from other risk assessments
• Outline the conduct of a whole food risk assessment

This course meets a requirement of the JIFSAN Core Certificate in Food Safety Risk Analysis.