Showing posts with label MRA GUIDELINE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MRA GUIDELINE. Show all posts

Thursday, August 2, 2012

EPA & USDA ANNOUNCE MICROBIAL RISK ASSESSMENT GUIDANCE FOR FOOD/WATER PATHOGENS

U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCYSpecialist 1st Class Loretta Marbrey, a preventive medicine technician assigned to the Military Sealift Command (MSC) hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19), tests water and vector samples that were collected from an internally displaced persons camp in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. The Navy Environmental Preventive Medicine Unit ashore is providing disaster relief assistance in matters related to environmental health specifically, water and vector-born diseases. Mercy is serving as an enabling platform to assist humanitarian operations ashore in ways that host nations and international relief organization find useful. Mercy is currently off the waters of Indonesia in support of Operation Unified Assistance, the humanitarian relief effort to aid the victims of the tsunami that struck Southeast Asia. U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Jeffery Russel

FROM: U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

EPA and USDA Announce First-Ever Microbial Risk Assessment Guidance


Guideline will help better determine health risks from food and waterborne pathogens

WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) today announced the first-ever Microbial Risk Assessment (MRA) Guideline. This new MRA Guideline lays out an overarching approach to conducting meaningful assessments of the risks to Americans posed by pathogens in food and water. Pathogens ingested in food and water can result in acute gastrointestinal-related illnesses; some gastrointestinal-related illnesses can result in long-term and permanent health effects as well as premature death. This new guideline will improve the quality of the data collected by public health scientists charged with protecting Americans from pathogen-related risks in food and water.

"This guidance contributes significantly to improving the quality and consistency of microbial risk assessments, and provides greater transparency to stakeholders and other interested parties in how federal agencies approach and conduct their microbial risk assessments," said Dr. Glenn Paulson, EPA Science Advisor. "Based on the success of this project, we are seeking further opportunities to combine our technical expertise in our continuing efforts to protect the Americans’ health."

"The microbial risk assessment guideline developed by FSIS, the EPA and our other public health partners will help protect consumers by allowing us to uniformly assess and reduce health risks from pathogens," USDA Under Secretary for Food Safety Dr. Elisabeth Hagen said. "We’re proud to have worked with our partners on this guideline that will provide our risk assessors with a transparent and scientifically rigorous document to use in protecting public health."

Formal risk assessments for food, water, and environmentally-relevant chemicals have been undertaken for decades. However, an overarching microbial risk assessment guideline has not been available until now. The guideline announced today meets this need by providing comprehensive, yet specific and descriptive information for developing assessments of microbial risk in food and water.


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