ILSI Europe Report Series
Microbiological safety is a major risk concern, which has led to a much increased focus on public health and methods for establishing clear health targets. Given the difficulty of using public health goals such as an appropriate level of protection (ALOP) to establish control measures, the concept of food safety objectives (FSOs) was introduced to provide meaningful guidance to food safety management in practice. The ILSI Europe Risk Analysis in Microbiology task force organised a workshop on Food safety objectives – Role in microbiological food safety management. This workshop, organised in collaboration with the International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods (ICMSF), took place in April 2003 in Marseille, France. The summary report has now been published in the ILSI Europe Report Series.
The workshop made clear that it is critical that FSOs be achievable by current good industrial and consumer practices, and as we inevitably seek to improve standards of public health protection, industry must be able to meet such standards in commercial practice. As the wider scientific community has had little exposure to these concepts, this workshop provided an opportunity for a cross-section of food safety management professionals to consider the issues in depth. The process of introducing FSOs will present a fresh challenge to the way science, government and industry interact in the future.
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