Animal health and food safety risk assessments

Animal health risk assessment is one of the key tasks of Veterinary Services. There are well-established protocols created by the World Organisation for Animal Health and Codex Alimentarius Commission for assessing risk. They cover terrestrial and aquatic animals and zoonotic infectious diseases, food safety, and the environment, taking into consideration the connections between them. Significant effort has been made in developing methods to estimate the probability, and consequences, of infectious disease incursion in disease-free countries through legal or illegal trade or via the movements of insects and wildlife. Additional efforts have been made in the design of prevention strategies and contingency plans. Concerns about possible pandemics of avian influenza continue to be important motivation for monitoring viruses for selection of vaccine candidate strains. The recent COVID-19 pandemic was zoonotic in nature and caused extensive disruption throughout the world. Tools are becoming available for quantitative food safety risk assessments for bacteria, toxins, viruses, and antimicrobial resistance genes, including tools that allow simulations for the selection of effective control options. Applying participatory techniques facilitates the conduct of risk analysis in low- and middle-income countries. In internationally established frameworks, risk assessment is the first step towards elimination of important infectious diseases in endemic countries and it is an important contributor to the reduction of disease risks. Quantitative and qualitative socio-economic and behavioural studies have been developed to design risk management options that are acceptable and sustainable for actors throughout value chains.