The expert consultation recommended that FAO and WHO should:
ensure that for future risk assessment activities, a clear-cut statement of purpose be provided by the risk managers at the start of risk assessment activities, followed by an active and continuous interaction between risk managers and risk assessors. It is important that risk managers are involved in the design of the risk assessment and assist in making explicit the scope of the assessment. This will ensure that the outcomes will be of maximum use to all parties.
highlight the need to collect quantitative data to all steps of the risk assessments, so as to provide appropriate risk management conclusions.
provide assistance to developing countries to gather quantitative information for risk assessment. Appropriate resources should be provided to developing countries to train and undertake risk assessments and those wishing to extend the risk assessments to local needs.
encourage microbiologists to develop and employ techniques to differentiate pathogenic and non-pathogenic strains.
encourage governments that have set or intend to set targets for food-borne diseases addressed in this report to use the models presented to inform their decisions in setting appropriate food safety objectives and intervention strategies.
commission a document to assist a wider readership in understanding this report. The recommended document would describe for non-specialists appropriate information on;
i) shellfish and poultry e.g. production methods, processing, economics and legislation.
ii) Vibrio spp. and Campylobacter spp. (surveillance, epidemiology and microbiology).
iii) risk assessment (its approach, components and how it can answer risk managers’ questions).
facilitate hands-on demonstrations for identifying and collecting relevant data for risk assessment for specific commodity/pathogen combinations including risk characterization using various modelling software.
develop new ways of communicating the concepts of risk assessments to users.
promote utilization of the valuable framework models that have now been established to undertake further risk assessments. It would be relatively easy to use modules from these risk assessments to develop a risk assessment of Salmonella in shrimps. The experts consider this would be a valuable risk assessment for future consideration.
consider, for future risk assessment activities, the involvement of scientific experts to serve as a standing advisory resource group to the risk assessment drafting group, for the duration of a specific work assignment. This would be a significant complementary activity to the more formal in-person experts meetings and would certainly take greater advantage of the intellectual resources of the expert community through their knowledge of and access to relevant data, references and network of colleagues.
encourage the submission of appropriate aspects of the work to peer-reviewed technical publications and the seafood and poultry trade press.
make the software models available in a format usable by other professionals and provide appropriate guidance on their use.
