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Prioritization of Microbial Risks in Foods using Multi-criteria Decision Analysis Tools
Valerie J. Davidson
NSERC/RIM Chair for Women in Science and Engineering
Professor, School of Engineering, University of Guelph
Guelph Food Safety Seminar Series Presentation, January 13, 2010
Abstract: A Multi-Factorial Risk Prioritization Framework has been developed to consider four major risk factors: public health, consumer risk perceptions and acceptance, market-level impacts, and social sensitivity. Most approaches to microbial risk prioritization developed to date are based on measures of health outcomes and do not systematically account for multiple dimensions within one factor or other factors that are important to risk managers in decision making. The framework is operationalized in two stages: risk profiles for food-pathogen combinations are captured on information cards and formal multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) in which the four risk prioritization factors are aggregated to produce a ranking of priorities.
Using Canadian data, risk profiles were developed for 6 pathogen-food combinations: Campylobacter in chicken; Salmonella in chicken and in spinach; E. coli O157 in spinach and in beef; and Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat meats. Five MCDA tools were used to produce ranked lists based on the four major factors. Outranking methods were preferred due to expandibility, flexibility in reflecting values of different decision makers and ability to capture uncertainty and variability in the factor values.
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