ASEAN Risk Assessment Centre for Food Safety (ARAC) in collaboration with International Life Sciences Institute Southeast Asia Region (ILSI SEA Region) had organised the Workshop on the Microbiological Risk Assessment on the 17th and 18th March 2022 virtually. The objectives of this workshop were to enhance knowledge on food safety risk analysis, provide the latest updates on microbiological risk analysis as well as to strengthen interactions and communication between risk managers and risk assessors.
The workshop was officiated by the Chairperson of ASEAN Health Cluster 4 (AHC4), Ms Wong Wai See from Brunei Darussalam (Figure 1) and featured seven presentations from reputable experts and speakers from the ILSI, Scientific Committee of ARAC, Indonesian Risk Assessment Centre (INARAC) and ASEAN Risk Assessment Centre for Food Safety (ARAC).
Figure 1 : Opening remarks by Chair of ASEAN Health Cluster 4 (AHC4)
The workshop was attended by 56 participants representing ASEAN Member States AHC4, ASEAN Consultative Committee for Standards and Quality - Prepared Foodstuff Product Working Group (ACCSQ - PFPWG), Scientific Committee Member of ARAC, ARAC Focal Point, ASEAN Risk Assessors, ARAC Secretariat and ASEAN Secretariat – Health Division (Figure 2).
Figure 2 : Workshop participants
This workshop is a kick start to series of activities including trainings for the preparation of ARAC work on quantitative microbiological risk assessment on Salmonella in chicken.
In this workshop, participants had been exposed with the overview of food safety risk analysis encompassing risk management, risk communication and risk assessment particularly for microbiological contamination. Two experts with experience in FAO/WHO JEMRA evaluation presented on microbiological risk assessment framework using JEMRA approach and interaction between risk manager and risk assessor. Participants also had the opportunity to gain insight from the previous Scientific Committee of ARAC evaluation on risk assessment request on Salmonella in chicken through sharing of data gap, lessons learnt and challenges.
On the last day, participants were assigned to group works and tasked to prepare a microbiological risk assessment request using a template that is extracted from ARAC Request Form for Risk Assessment on Food Safety. These group works aimed to enhance knowledge of risk manager on how to post the right risk questions/purpose, scope and expected application of outcome from a risk assessment.
