4.4 Identification of public health and safety risks posed by seafood
The Risk Ranking Report (Attachment 10) provides the scientific basis for the development of a Primary Production and Processing Standard for seafood. The report qualitatively ranks the public health and safety risk posed by consumption of seafood in Australia. Overall the risks from seafood are usually well managed and are therefore considered relatively low.
The risk ranking compares the relative risks associated with the wide variety of seafood commodities available in Australia – domestically produced and imported. It takes into account the chemical and biological food safety hazards potentially present, and assigns each commodity or group of commodities to a broad relative risk category: low, medium or high. There are only a very small number of products that may present relatively high public health and safety risks.
The ranking brings together the available scientific and technical information on food safety hazards in seafood and identifies seafood commodities of higher priority for the development of risk management strategies in the context of the Primary Production and Processing Standard for seafood.
