E. Todd, J. Farber, and W. H. Ross, Health Canada, Ottawa, Canada Quantitative Risk assessments are starting to be done in food microbiology an with the current interest in illnesses from contaminated produce. It is expected that there will be several assessments in this area. There are many possible combinations of pathogens and produce.
Contamination can occur at every stage of the food chain.
Although good control of refrigeration will limit growth, processes for reducing levels of contamination are limited. Little information is available on pathogen prevalence and contamination levels, but observed values appear to below. Initial dose response analysis is based on a beta-poisson relationship.