Review of the Methodology Proposed by the Food Safety and Inspection Service for Followup Surveillance of In-Commerce Businesses. A Letter Report

摘要

The National Academies issued a report on initial surveillance of in-commerce businesses by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). FSIS requested feedback on its proposed process for priority-setting for followup surveillance in cases in which initial surveillance did not lead to an investigation or enforcement action, and this report is a sequel to the first report. To provide context for the current report, the Committee for the Review of the Methodology Proposed by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) for Followup Surveillance of In-Commerce Businesses summarized and commented on the response by FSIS to the earlier report. FSIS agreed that whether there is oversight by other authorities should be the primary risk consideration and that product volume, inherent hazard, consumer susceptibility, and food-defense vulnerability should be used as secondary risk considerations. FSIS, however, seems to have given equal weight to all secondary risk considerations instead of assigning relative importance to them. As illustrated in the appendices to this report, the committees proposed stepwise decision process for priority-setting for surveillance involved setting two priority levels: high and low.