Hazard identification and exposure assessment for microbial food safety risk assessment

The four cornerstones of microbial food safety risk assessment are hazard i dentification, exposure assessment, hazard characterization, and risk chara cterization. These steps represent a systematic process for identifying adv erse consequences and their associated probabilities arising from consumpti on of feuds that may be contaminated with microbial pathogens and/or microb ial toxins. This paper presents a discussion of the first two steps: hazard identification and exposure assessment, and considerations for different a pproaches that can be used to analyze the relevant information. (C) 2000 El sevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.