Microbial Risk Assessment (MRA) Guideline Published

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have 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.'

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. This document 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 here.

Citation:

U.S. Department of Agriculture/Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA/FSIS) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (2012). Microbial Risk Assessment Guideline: Pathogenic Organisms with Focus on Food and Water. FSIS Publication No. USDA/FSIS/2012-001; EPA Publication No. EPA/100/J12/001

Posted by Tim Sandle