Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment of Salmonellosis from the Consumption of Australian Pork: Minced Meat from Retail to Burgers Prepared and Consumed at Home

AbstractPork burgers could be expected to have an elevated risk of salmonellosis compared to other pork products due to their comminuted nature. A stochastic risk assessment was performed to estimate the risk of salmonellosis from Australian pork burgers and considered risk ‐affecting factors in the pork supply chain from retail to consumption at home. Conditions modeled included prevalence and concentration ofSalmonella in pork mince, time and temperature effects during retail, consumer transport, and domestic storage and the effect of cooking, with the probability of illness from consumption estimated based on these effects. The model was two ‐dimensional, allowing for the separation of variability and uncertainty. Potential changes to production practices and consumer behaviors were examined through alternative scenarios. Under current conditions in Australia, the mean risk of salmonellosis from consumption of 100 g pork burgers was e stimated to be 1.54×10−8 per serving or one illness per 65,000,000 servings consumed. Under a scenario in which all pork mince consumed is served as pork burgers, and with conservative (i.e., worst‐case) assumptions, 0.746 cases of salmonellosis per year from pork burgers in Australia were pred icted. Despite the adoption of several conservative assumptions to fill data gaps, it is predicted that pork burgers have a low probability of causing salmonellosis in Australia.

Source: Risk Analysis - December 7, 2018 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Phillip M. Gurman, Tom Ross, Andreas Kiermeier Tags: Original Research Article Source Type: research