Application of Monte Carlo Simulation in Industrial Microbiological Exposure Assessment

1.1 Food safety systems: HACCP and risk analysis Nowadays, modern societies pay great attention to food safety. For this reason, tools such as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) and Risk Analysis (RA) have been developed, helping the production of safer foodstuffs and, consequently, reducing the number of foodborne illnesses. Nevertheless, there are certain differences between HACCP and RA, HACCP system is the main tool in evaluating and controlling foodborne hazards in food industries while risk analysis demonstrate to be an effective tool in designing, developing and evaluating control measures protecting public health inside a country or region. In addition, RA has been used for seeking solutions in commercial litigation as an objective tool to assess the risk that a food has to the consumer (Zwietering & Nauta, 2007). HACCP systems do however have some limitations, such as the inability to be linked with public health goals and the incapability to deal with the inherent variability in food systems due to its qualitative nature (Buchanan & Whiting, 1998; Hoornstra et al. 2001). Risk analysis is a complex process consisting of three interconnected components: risk assessment (scientific component), risk management (legal component) and risk communication. Risk assessment consists of four steps, hazard identification where the hazard is related to the onset of illness by using data from foodborne outbreaks caused by food contaminated with the hazard, as well as its taxonomy and virulence factors associated with the development of the disease. Having identified the hazard, a hazard characterisation is carried out which identifies the aetiology of the disease caused by the biological agent, the influence of different subgroups on the disease symptoms and the dose-response relationship. The third step is the exposure assessment which deals with the ecology of the biological hazard, the critical steps of the production chain in which the hazard could be present or proliferate, and the control measures which determine the influence of environmental factors and process conditions on the survival of the biological agent. Finally, all the information gathered in the previous sections is used to produce an estimation of the