Probabilistic models for food-borne disease risk assessment.

Risk assessment is a tool used by manufacturers, governmental, or regulatory bodies to evaluate the safety of food production systems and decide on strategies to protect consumers. This article presents a general approach to the use of probabilistic models to assess the risk related to specific hazards in some categories of food. It discusses their value in organising and analysing the scientific knowledge about the factors that most affect risk along the food production chain, but also highlights the data gaps that currently hamper accurate risk assessment.