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The main objective of this proposal is to improve food safety globally by facilitating the exchange of information and user-friendly tools through an integrated online resource that will support the use of the risk analysis paradigm to aid in decision making and help solve food safety problems across the farm-to-fork continuum. More specifically, The Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN) and its collaborators are proposing to: <OL> <LI> Develop an interactive online catalog on risk assessment (ICRA) by applying the methods and technologies conceptualized and applied to build the Campylobacter risk assessment framework (CRAF) model. <LI> Further develop the existing online FoodRisk.org database infrastructure. <OL type="a"> <LI> Evaluate the current infrastructure to allow the development of a more user-friendly and easily accessible database; <LI>Build an user-friendly searchable repository for completed chemical and microbiological risk assessments and documents related to food safety; <LI>Build infrastructure within FoodRisk.org to support tools such as ICRA and the novel risk-ranking tool (iRISK); <LI>Develop and evaluate online tutorials for ICRA and iRISK, as well as use of the risk assessment repository and searches in the FoodRisk.org database.
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</ol> At the conclusion of the three years of this project we expect to have improved the organization of FoodRisk.org database, developed a thesaurus of food safety risk analysis, and created a searchable repository for chemical and microbial risk assessments. We hope to have expanded FoodRisk.org infrastructure so it is more flexible and compatible, providing unique tools to support risk assessments and aid decision-making in the area of food safety. We hope to have among these unique tools, ICRA and iRISK, two promising applications that can facilitate and support the use of risk analysis in the food safety community.<P>
In addition, when complete we expect that ICRA will be populated with data from models developed for Campylobacter in broiler meat, and at least two other pathogen- commodity combinations. These two sets of MQRA will allow the research team to evaluate the generic model of ICRA that was developed. In addition, online tutorials should have been developed and evaluated by users of ICRA, iRISK and FoodRisk.org and the research team should be able to analyze the comments and suggestions and use those to improve the tools and tutorials. Lastly, we expect that by making FoodRisk.org more user friendly, more accessible and improving the tools it has to offer it can serve as an instrument for national and international networking, an essential element for capacity building and international development in the area of food safety and risk analysis.
NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: The main objective of this proposal is to improve food safety globally by facilitating the exchange of information and user-friendly tools through an integrated online resource that will support the use of the risk analysis paradigm to aid decision making and help solving food safety problems across the farm-to-fork continuum. The Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition is proposing to: i) develop an online integrated catalogue on risk assessment (ICRA) by applying the methods and technology used to build the Campylobacter Risk Assessment Framework (CRAF) developed to aid risk assessors in the European Union; ii) redesign FoodRisk.org infrastructure to be more user friendly, easier to retrieve technical information and to support applications such as ICRA and another risk-ranking tool developed by the US Food and Drug Administration, the Institute of Food Technology and Risk Sciences International Inc. named, iRISK, iii) develop and evaluate online tutorials for ICRA, iRISK and for conducting data searches within FoodRisk.org. JIFSAN is uniquely positioned to coordinate these research efforts due to its experience in food safety, risk analysis, and the history in integrating research, education and extension to benefit several stakeholders across the food chain.
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APPROACH: The interactive online catalogue on risk assessment (ICRA) will be developed by applying the new methods and technology developed by our collaborators to build the Campylobacter Risk Assessment Framework (CRAF) model. CRAF will be restructured to fit a general format (ICRA) that will allow quantitative risk assessments other than Campylobacter in broiler meat to be cataloged allowing users to obtain and compare detailed information for future risk assessments. An online tutorial for ICRA will also be developed using Flash video format from Adobe to ensure the wide use of the tool.The JIFSAN will sponsor a one day workshop in College Park, MD to release ICRA and elicit feedback on the tool and its tutorial. Risk analysis professionals and researchers from the U.S. and abroad will be invited to attend. In addition, users will be required to register to use the tool and tutorial and will be asked to answer an online survey when exiting the applications. The surveys will be analyzed by the research group to target improvements. Another online tutorial using Flash video will be developed for another risk analysis tool, named iRisk. iRisk is a risk ranking software developed by FDA. iRisk and its tutorial will be peer-reviewed through the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as mandated by the Information Quality Act. However, an online survey for users that choose to take the iRisk online tutorial will also be developed and analyzed for improvements. Both ICRA and iRisk will be made publicly available through FoodRisk.org, an online resource for food safety risk analysis managed by JIFSAN. In order to enable FoodRisk.org to support ICRA and iRisk, JIFSAN needs to build a new IT infrastructure that is more flexible and compatible with different formats and software required to support both tools. JIFSAN will buy and install a new tower server and will acquire the required software (Analytica Decision Engine from Lumina) to run iRisk. Lastly, to further improve FoodRisk.org's database in food safety and risk analysis and to make sure it is easily searchable, a librarian specialized in food safety and with knowledge of risk analysis and database management will be hired to critically evaluate the infrastructure and indexing methods currently being used by FoodRisk.org. A thesaurus in food safety risk analysis will also be developed. The thesaurus will be a set of controlled vocabulary and relationships for use in setting up pages and facilitating search and retrieval of records within the database. To facilitate searchers within Foodrisk.org, a repository of completed chemical and microbial risk assessments related to food safety will be created within FoodRisk.org. The repository will allow easy and quick access to completed risk assessments and will be assemble by conducting literature searches.