Use of predictive microbiology in microbial food safety risk assessment

Microbial risk assessment is a newly emerging discipline in the area of food safety. One of the difficulties associated with microbial risk assessment is in determining the number of microorganisms in food at a given time, i.e., estimating exposure of an individual to the microorganism. Numbers of bacteria in food can change at all stages of food production and processing, depending on the nature of the food and the way it is handled, stored and processed. Predictive microbiology can be used to estimate changes in bacterial numbers, allowing exposure of an individual to a pathogen to be assessed. A survey was sent to scientists in the food industry to determine their perspective on the role of predictive microbiology in conducting microbial risk assessments. In this paper, responses to that survey are presented, as well as examples of the potential risk of foodborne illness from a cooked meat product contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus and hamburger contaminated with Salmonella.