Moving towards a risk-based food safety management

Classical hazard-based approaches to food safety relying heavily on regulatory inspection and sampling regimes cannot sufficiently ensure consumer protection. It is now generally accepted that a modern food safety management system should link the hazards to public health and be based on prevention rather than end product testing and control. The last decade food safety management at international level has been moved towards a more risk-based approach to food safety control with regulators around the world adopting the risk analysis framework as the basis for their decision-making. This review paper presents an overview of the structure and function of a risk based food safety management and the interaction between risk managers, risk assessors and stakeholders.