The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Sir,
Microbial contamination of food has been responsible either as isolated cases or outbreaks for many human illnesses and even deaths over long years of man march on the earth. Over long years, it was possible to invent many techniques and technologies that control bioburden in the food material to avoid adverse impact on the life of the consumers. During recent years, useful tools were adopted to provide a mean for the assessment of the hazard to the human health encountered from exposure to pathogenic microbes. Taking into consideration, several factors such as dose-response model of infection, affected populations, the impact of processing conditions of food and cross-contamination
Using mean that provide an objective method to estimate the microbiological risk was a subject of interest for decades. At the beginning of the twentieth century, early attempts were made to cover concerns about the microbiological quality issues of water and food
The search for a better and objective methodology was sought to the avoid limitation of indicator method. The utilization of microbial hazard appraisal in a quantitative manner will empower coordinate estimations of pathogens to be utilized to create pass/fail rules for nourishment, water, and different vehicles that might be the wellspring of microbial introduction to human populace
A prominently useful tool in food microbiology comes into play which has an important role in providing an objective measurement of the health hazard risk encountered from consumption of contaminated food by hazardous microbes. This tool is called Quantitative Microbiological Risk Assessment (QMRA). Despite its few limitations, yet it provides a crucial role in decision making
A simple worked example could show the impact of changing microbial bioburden pathogenicity from minor to severe health hazard when other conditions are assumed to be the same as shown in
Severity of The Hazard | Rank of The Risk | Post-Processing effectiveness |
Rank of The Risk/Total Annual Illness Per Target Population |
Minor | 33 | Log1= 0.000 | 35/2.54 X102 |
Mild | 39 | Log3=0.477 | 38/7.61X102 |
Moderate | 45 | Log10=1.000 | 40/2.54 X103 |
Severe | 56 | Log1000=3.000 | 52/2.54 X105 |
Increase in the bioburden of pathogens with a minor hazard
In a survey of early QMRAs, Schlundt (2000) remarked that couple of formal QMRAs had been completed as per the Codex Alimentarius rules
Nevertheless, the application of QMRA is underestimated and/or not used with its full potential value, especially in the developing countries where lack of sufficient trends and input monitoring data are hindering barriers for correct implementation of this methodology. The mandatory implementation of this technique as a stand-alone or in combination with the other boosting tools such as Statistical Process Control (SPC) by regulatory authorities after an appropriate establishment of globally harmonized rules for the application may provide suitable starting platform.Awareness of the GxP, microbial hazard and the value of various tools used in the food microbiology the among the workers in the industry field are essential in the dissemination of correct practices to deliver safe products to the intermediate and the final customers.
N/A