Data limitations
In general, limited access to or availability of data presented considerable difficulties for assessing the likelihood of adverse health effects. Insufficient data on the prevalence and levels of microbiological hazards in seafood available for consumption in Australia prevented the undertaking of a quantitative exposure assessment, so the estimates of likelihood of adverse health effects are largely qualitative, and this impacts on the risk rankings derived from them.
A clear distinction is made, however, between those cases where limited data is available (leading to uncertainty in the conclusions) and those where the available data shows lack of, for example, a specific hazard in a specific commodity (evidence which will tend to reduce the ‘likelihood of illness’ rating in that case).
Table 4 indicates the way in which the various forms of data and information were used to rank the likelihood of adverse health effects caused by a hazard into categories of unlikely, likely and very likely. Due to the gaps in data and information being unevenly spread across hazard/commodity pairs, it was necessary to employ a degree of expert opinion/judgement in the likelihood of illness ratings, to bridge the gap between what is indicated by the data and what is plausible, given our knowledge of the hazard, the seafood commodity, its regulatory environment, and its production and processing supply chain up to the point of consumption.
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