Overview of available methods for Risk Based Control within the European Union

This paper gives an overview of methods available for implementing Risk Based Control (RBC), consisting of two steps: Risk Categorization (RC) and Risk Based Surveillance (RBS). Various models and approaches are available for prioritizing hazard-food combinations in RC. Economic models and expert elicitation can be used to include the food safety performance of processing companies in RBS, based on historical data, food safety management systems present and the level of compliance. When Member States apply RBC, the methodology used to derive the various scores for RC and RBS need to be grounded and documented to improve transparency in the applied procedure.