Elicitation of expert knowledge on controlling Salmonella in the pork chain

Salmonella is one of the most important risks for food safety, and pork is one of the sources of human salmonellosis. A chain approach is essential to reduce Salmonella in pork products. A survey was carried out among Dutch and Danish experts in the field of Salmonella to evaluate the entire pork supply chain. The aims of the survey were to determine and rank possible management interventions (such as adjusted or new procedures, technical adjustments and control measures), and to estimate the details of the course of infection and contamination. An additional objective was to compare the opinions of experts from different countries and different backgrounds. The two stages in which it was expected that management interventions to improving food safety with respect to Salmonella in pork would be most effective were the the finishing stage (by preventing the spread of Salmonella within the farm) and the slaughtering stage (by preventing cross-contamination). The differences in the opinions of respondents from different backgrounds were mainly reflected by the relative importance they attached to the specific management interventions. For instance, the Danish respondents attached more importance to the purchase of Salmonella-free piglets in the finishing stage and to logistic slaughter. Respondents with a research background seemed to attach most importance to interventions that were also presented in recent literature, such as feeding non-heated grain to finishing pigs. For issues in which multiple stages of a supply chain are involved, a solid basic knowledge about the conditions per stage with respect to the issue is necessary

New approaches to food safety economics

Highlights and important insights from the presentations and discussions, concluded with the major research areas identified for future wor

A New Decision Support Framework for Managing Foot-and-mouth Disease Epidemics

Animal disease epidemics such as the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) pose recurrent threat to countries with intensive livestock production. Efficient FMD control is crucial in limiting the damage of FMD epidemics and securing food production. Decision making in FMD control involves a hierarchy of decisions made at strategic, tactical, and operational levels. These decisions are interdependent and have to be made under uncertainty about future development of the epidemic. Addressing this decision problem, this paper presents a new decision-support framework based on multi-level hierarchic Markov processes (MLHMP). The MLHMP model simultaneously optimizes decisions at strategic, tactical, and operational levels, using Bayesian forecasting methods to model uncertainty and learning about the epidemic. As illustrated by the example, the framework is especially useful in contingency planning for future FMD epidemic