For a safety-critical system, i.e., a system whose consequences of failure are very high, it is not possible to rely upon testing to provide the necessary verification. The difficulties arise mainly from the shear number of tests that are required to permit statistically meaningful conclusions to be drawn about the system. Other difficulties with testing include failure to observe erroneous out...

Beef trim, the primary component of ground beef, is tested by both the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and meat packers for Escherichia coli O157:H7 under a zero tolerance standard. We compare and contrast the process control and filtering roles of this testing on costs and food safety outcomes. Both of these roles of testing have been alternatively emphasized in recent legislative pr...

With the growing cost of using animals to test the safety of new chemicals and an increasing backlog of chemicals awaiting testing, the quest for cell-based in vitro alternatives for toxicity testing is gaining momentum.

The primary purpose of surveillance testing and maintenance (T&M) is to assure the reliability of standby safety systems and components in nuclear power plants. The optimal schedule of safety equipment outages due to testing and maintenance is one of the parameters of the plant safety. Early optimizations of single component test intervals were based on minimizing the risk without cost consider...

Safety testing of veterinary vaccines requires the use of a large number of animals to investigate possible local and systemic reactions. This includes amongst others the pathological examination of the injection site in frequent intervals. For this a selected killing of animals in frequent intervals is inevitable. To reduce the number of animals needed for this kind of safety testing, magnetic...