The Food Safety Risk Analysis Clearinghouse was created in 1997 in response to the May 1997 Report to the President on the National Food Safety Initiative. The Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN), a collaboration between the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the University of Maryland (UM), is responsible for the Clearinghouse. The Clearinghouse is operated and directed by collaborators from FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) and the University of Maryland. The mission of the Clearinghouse is to collect and catalogue available data and methodology on food safety risk analysis offered by the private sector, trade associations, federal and state agencies, and international sources.
http://www.foodriskclearinghouse.umd.edu
In this issue:
The Food Safety Research Consortium announced its formation at a launch on February 6, 2003
Recent Additions to the Clearinghouse
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The Food Safety Research Consortium announced its formation at a launch on February 6, 2003
The Food Safety Research Consortium (FSRC) is a collaboration effort between diverse research institutions with the purpose of improving the effectiveness of the U.S. food safety system in reducing food-borne illness.
Although the U.S. food safety regulatory system has high credibility among consumers and a reputation as being among the best in the world, new food safety challenges are constantly emerging. Some new challenges stem from changes in consumption patterns, demographic changes, new food processing technologies and an increased reliance in food imports. According to CDC estimates, there are 76 million food borne illnesses each year of which 325,000 result in hospitalizations and 5,000 result in death
The FSRC focuses on providing tools that will improve the allocation and effectiveness of government and stakeholder food safety resources. The FSRC efforts include taking a science and risk based approach to food safety in the development of new analytical tools for devising research and for regulatory and educational interventions.
For
more information about the FSRC or to download transcripts or audio files
of the meeting go to:
http://www.rff.org/fsrc/fsrc.htm
For FSRC
project summary documents, or “Backgrounders” go to
http://www.rff.org/fsrc/projects.htm
Selected Upcoming Events
Food & Agricultural Marketing Policy (FAMPS) Conference
-
Emerging Roles for Food Labels: Inform, Protect, Persuade
March 20-21, 2003
Westin Grand Hotel, Washington, D.C.
http://www.aaea.org/sections/famps/famps.cfm
-
FDA SCIENCE: Protecting America’s
Health
April 24-25, 2003
The Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC
http://www.dcscienceforum.org/
- Animal Agriculture and Food Safety Risk Analysis
May 19- 30, 2003 Penn. State University, USA
September 01-12, 2003 Bergerac, France
For course description and registration information go to:
http://www.risk-modelling.com/training_ahafsra.htm
Please note: Places are very limited this year for this, our most popular course. We have traditionally offered this course about four times a year publicly around the world. However, due to time constraints, this year we are running only one public Animal Agriculture and Food Safety course (in France at David Vose's residence). There may also be a few places available at the Penn State course, although this is essentially an in-house course
http://www.foodriskclearinghouse.umd.edu/events.htm
Recent Additions to the Clearinghouse
AUV Toolhttp://www.foodriskclearinghouse.umd.edu/AuvTool.htm
Author: Zheng, Junyu, and H. Christopher Frey
Summary: This software tool, developed for the Office of Research and Development, Environmental Protection Agency, is for use in quantifying variability and uncertainty in quantitative analysis. The tool was presented at the Society for Risk Analysis Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA, in a workshop entitled "Bootstrap Simulation and Two-Dimensional Monte Carlo Simulation: Dealing with Variability and Uncertainty, Mixture Distributions, Measurement Error, and Censored Data." The software is available to download, as is a user's manual, technical documentation, workshop handouts and slides, and a paper entitled "Quantification of variability and uncertainty using mixture distributions: evaluation of sample size, mixing weights and separation between components"
FDA Labeling Cost Model
http://www.foodriskclearinghouse.umd.edu/lcm.htm
FDA contracted with (Research Triangle Institute) RTI to update RTI's 1990 labeling cost model to make the model more relevant for the types of analyses currently conducted by FDA. This report provides background information on the process of changing the labeling information on food packaging, a description of the revised cost estimates used in the model, a description of the underlying assumptions and calculations used in developing the model, and instructions for working with the model to obtain specific cost estimates.
Editor Notes
If you have any questions about the Clearinghouse or the Newsletter, or would like to place an announcement please contact Cristina McLaughlin (301) 436 1978 or e-mail cm298@umail.umd.edu
| The use of product or company names is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as a JIFSAN Food Safety Risk Analysis Clearinghouse endorsement or preference for certain products or firms over others that are not mentioned. |