Dar seafood ppp standard

Format of this report

The method by which relative risk rankings were estimated for each commodity group is explained in Section 3. This section describes how consideration of the severity of adverse health effects due to hazards present in food and estimates of the likelihood of those adverse health effects occurring in the Australian population due to consumption of seafood are combined into commodity/hazard relative risk rankings. The method by which these rankings are used to provide the overall relative risk ranking for each commodity group is explained.

The relative risk rankings for individual seafood commodity groups are contained in Section 4. The likelihood and severity of adverse health affects due to the hazards potentially associated with each seafood commodity are described, and the estimated risk rankings tabulated. An overall ranking for the commodity is then generated by consideration of the highest relative risk level pertaining to that commodity. Those commodities ranked as relatively high or medium risk are discussed further in Section 5, with attendant uncertainties described in Section 6. The overall conclusions are in Section 7.
In order to avoid unnecessary duplication of material and to simplify this report, various sets of relevant data have also been collated in separate appendixes.
Appendix 1 contains information relevant to the through-chain assessment of hazards in seafood commodities. It includes:

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  a description of the production and processing supply chain for each sector/commodity
  
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  a discussion of the points along that supply chain at which specific hazards might be introduced, increased, reduced or eliminated
  
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  a description of the effects of processing and handling and the impacts of existing food safety regulations and voluntary risk management practices on levels of hazards.
  

This information is important in assessing the level of food safety risk in cases where epidemiological and hazard prevalence data are scarce, and as an aid to developing appropriate risk management strategies.

Australian epidemiological data on outbreaks of food-borne illness linked to consumption of seafood between January 1995 and June 2002 are at Appendix 2.
Information on the consumption by (non-infant) Australians of various classes of seafood is at Appendix 3.
Detailed notes on the properties of identified food-borne hazards and their association with seafood commodities relevant to this evaluation are provided at Appendix 4.
The information includes data, where available, on the prevalence and concentration of hazards in seafood and further discussion of epidemiological evidence of food-borne illness due to the presence of each hazard in seafood in Australia or overseas. Much of the information in Appendix 4 has been drawn from formal quantitative and qualitative assessments of the risks associated with consumption of various classes of seafood, or with exposure to certain hazards within the total diet.