Course Description

This one-day course provides participants with an understanding of why risk analyses are done to promote safe trade of agricultural and food products. They will learn the international requirements associated with the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement of the World Trade Organizations and how national governments implement these requirements within their own regulatory systems. In addition, participants will be provided with an understanding of the main steps under each of the three major components of risk analysis: risk assessment, risk management, and risk communication.

The target audience is new members of the risk analysis community. It provides a generic overview of risk analysis. It serves as a contextual primer for anyone interested in or involved with a broad range of risk analysis activities, regardless of application.

Prerequisites: None

Overview of Topics

• The Language of Risk Analysis
• Introduction to the World Trade Organization
• Overview of U.S. food safety legal system and the role of risk analysis
• Risk Assessment Toolbox
• Setting up a Risk Assessment
• Introduction to Food Safety Risk Management
• Risk Management Principles
• Introduction to Risk Communication

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the language of risk analysis, its basic concepts, science-based risk analysis activities, and why risk analysis is done.
• Understand the major international agreements impacting agriculture and food trade (Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement, Technical Barriers to Trade, and the Trade Facilitation agreement) and how risk analysis tools are used to facilitate trade.
• Understand how a country incorporates these international requirements into their own regulatory requirements to facilitate market access while also protecting the safety of human and agricultural health using the U.S. as an example.
• Understand several of the risk analysis tools available that can be used to aid countries in evaluating risks based on the assessment goals, objectives, and available data.
• Know the risk assessment framework, the steps that go into setting up a risk assessment, and how a risk manager would manage the process so that the commissioned analysis answers the questions they are asking.
• Understand how risk management approaches to controlling food safety risk have evolved over the years and how the risk analysis approach differs from the previous approaches.
• Understand various tools used to manage risk.
• Understand the basic purpose of risk communication.

This course meets a requirement of the JIFSAN Core Certificate in Food Safety Risk Analysis.