If one defines hazard as a process, one may end up with an outcome of interest that is the same as the hazard itself. That only confuses the situation. It is therefore preferable to consider the hazard as a thing. Formulating Risk Questions Having defined one's outcome of interest, one must decide which risk questions one wishes to answer. Often, people jump to conclusions about the cause of a given problem without stopping to link it back to the original problem for which they were attempting to assess the risk.
Resistance develops in the cattle due to that antibiotic.
Pathogen X passes through the food chain carrying its resistant properties and is eaten by humans. It colonises and infects the humans, who become ill. Note that resistance to antibiotic Ab l can also be transmitted via the environment or via a different bacterium, by gene transfer. We must next collect the information necessary to calculate the probability of all of these steps' occurring. This can be performed either qualitatively or, as is sometimes preferable, quantitatively.