Reviewing food safety and market access risk in supply chains

Graham Centre member, Dr Marta Hernandez-Jover, School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, Charles Sturt University will led the project.

“A need to review, assess and address current and emerging technical issues in relation to food safety in the Australian red meat industry, as well as identify available methods to assess these potential risks, has been identified,” said Dr Hernandez-Jover.

The proposed project will build on the results of the previous risk profiling exercise conducted in 2002 for the Australian red meat industry, and provide an updated profiling and assessment of the risks identified.

Dr Hernandez-Jover explained, “The project will consist of three main activities. Firstly, a review of the current and new technical food safety issues affecting the Australian red meat industry, using information that is publicly available and an expert consultation exercise involving food safety regulators, public health experts, industry and consumer representatives.”

“Secondly, a review of currently available risk assessment tools, focusing on semi-quantitative methods, to be applied for the profiling and assessment of food safety and market access risks affecting the industry, and thirdly two to three semi-quantitative risk assessment tools identified in the previous activity will be used to profile and assess the food safety issues identified, and results will be compared.”

Project outcomes will provide the industry and risk managers with a robust risk profiling method that allows the identification of priority food safety and market access threats that pose a non-negligible risk to the industry and require further comprehensive assessments.

Fellow Graham Centre member, Dr Jane Heller, School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, CSU and Professor Michael Ward, The University of Sydney will collaborate with Dr Hernandez-Jover on this project.