Dar seafood ppp standard

1. Scope and purpose

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) has qualitatively ranked the relative public health and safety risks posed by chemical and microbiological hazards in seafood products eaten in Australia. FSANZ has undertaken this ranking, using the best available scientific data, for the sole purpose of developing a Primary Production and Processing Standard for seafood.

The output of this report is presented as a qualitative risk ranking, rather than as a risk assessment of commodity/hazard pairs. Risk ranking, a form of comparative risk assessment [1,2], enables differentiation of the relative level of risk posed by microbiological and chemical hazards present in the diverse range of seafood commodities in the Australian marketplace – for example, molluscs, crustacea and finfish.
The report draws on data from a variety of sources including published risk assessments, and the format is based on the elements of risk assessment defined by the Codex Alimentarius Commission: hazard identification; hazard characterisation; exposure assessment; and risk characterisation [3]. The analysis was, to some extent, constrained by the limited epidemiological data on seafood-borne illness and the scarcity of information of the prevalence and levels of hazards in seafood products in Australia. A quantitative exposure assessment was therefore not undertaken.
A qualitative assessment was made of the exposure of consumers to hazards in seafood products, drawing on available information on patterns of seafood consumption and the prevalence and levels of hazards in seafood. This assessment also took into account the likely influences of the conditions of production, processing, storage and use of seafood commodities along the entire seafood production and processing supply chain. No attempt was made to evaluate the efficacy of different risk management options.
FSANZ has drawn on the risk rankings and associated information presented in this report as a basis for developing suitable risk management options and strategies for seafood eaten in Australia.