to verify that prescribed procedures are understood and followed. Fol-
lowing certification, regular follow-up visits are made to ensure contin-
ued conformance with the standard.
The value to a company of seeking this outside endorsement of their
quality systems is that it provides objective evidence to potential cus-
tomers of the company’s commitment to quality and can therefore pay
substantial commercial dividends.
11.8 Risk Analysis
Regulatory authorities established by governments are charged with the
task of protecting the public from unsafe food and to do this they must
be able to assess foodborne risks and implement strategies for their
control. In the past, governments have adopted a variety of approaches
to achieve this, largely subjective and based on local interests and
conditions. Increasingly, however, there is a move to more systematic
and unified approaches to the problem. In part, this has been driven by
perceived weaknesses in existing systems, increasing concerns about the
safety of food and the need for cost effective strategies to prevent and,
where necessary, to reduce the risk from foodborne hazards. A major
impetus behind the introduction of transparent, science-based ap-
proaches to risk management has however been the needs of interna-
tional commerce.
Food and food products are important items of international trade
and the loss of export markets can have a serious economic impact on
producing countries. It is therefore important to be sure that when one
country rejects imported food on the grounds that it is unsafe this is
being done for sound scientific reasons rather than simply to erect a trade
barrier to protect domestic producers or to penalise the exporting
country. For this reason world trade agreements under the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), now the World Trade Organ-
ization (WTO), have recognized that so-called Sanitary and Phytosan-
itary (SPS) and Technical Barriers to Trade should be transparent and
based on sound scientific principles. In particular:
Members shall ensure that their SPS measures are based on an assess-
ment...of the risks to human, animal or plant life or health, taking into
account risk assessment techniques developed by the relevant interna-
tional organisations.Risk assessment is the scientific component of an overall system
known as risk analysis (Figure 11.13). Risk assessment should provide
an estimate, preferably quantitative, of the probability of occurrence and
the severity of adverse health effects resulting from human exposure to
436 Controlling the Microbiological Quality of Foods