Testing Rasmussen's risk management framework through case study: BSE in the UK.
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 125
ISBN-13: 9780494212882
Description: In 1986, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) was identified in the UK. Millions of BSE-infected cows were slaughtered and over 150 people contracted variant-Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), an inevitably fatal human form of BSE. The purpose of this thesis was to test the ability of Rasmussen's (1997) risk management framework to explain how and why food production accidents happen. Using the BSE epidemic in the UK as a case study, an AcciMap and Conflict Map were constructed to represent contributing factors of the epidemic according to the structure of Rasmussen's framework. These tools facilitated a test of the seven predictions made by the framework. All seven predictions were supported by the evidence, indicating that Rasmussen's risk management framework shows promise as a theoretically-driven explanation of how and why accidents happen in complex socio-technical systems, particularly in the food production domain.
Notes: Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-03, page: 1627.

Thesis (M.A.Sc.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

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