A Quantitative Microbiological Risk Assessment for Salmonella transmission in pigs in individual EU Member States

Abstract

A farm-to-consumption quantitative microbiological risk assessment (QMRA) for Salmonella in pigs has been developed for the European Food Safety Authority. The primary aim of the QMRA was to assess the impact of reductions of slaughterpig prevalence and the impact of important control measures applied at the farm and during transport, lairage and slaughter on the number of human cases of salmonellosis. The QMRA estimates the risk of salmonellosis and number of human cases for three product types: pork cuts, minced meat and fermented ready-to-eat sausages. For four case study European Union Member States (MSs) the average probability of illness was estimated to be between 1 in 100,000 and 1 in 10 million servings given consumption of one of the three product types. The total numbers of cases attributable to the three product types was also estimated. The results from the intervention analysis suggest that specific slaughterhouse interventions are currently best placed to produce consistently large reductions in the number of human cases and that for high breeding prevalence MSs reducing infection on breeder farms would seem to be an important on-farm control measure.