Category Research project
  • Expositionsschätzung
  • Mikrobiologie

EU-FORA 2024/25: Development of a qualitative risk assessment for meat from wild boar from a one-health perspective

Project status
In the closing process
Project start
Sept 2024
Project end
Aug 2025
Acronym
EU FORA 2024/25-2
Department
Exposition
Website
https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2025.e231107

Description and Objective

Conducting a rigorous and graphically comprehensible risk assessment of the risk from the consumption of wild boar meat, taking into account uncertainties. While most qualitative risk assessments merely comprise a compilation of facts known from the literature, i.e. they are a review of the literature, they rarely include graphical flow diagrams that provide precise information on the qualitative risks and uncertainties. This is to be exemplified here for the wild boar meat process chain to show that this form of risk assessment is particularly suitable for communicating facts. The aim is to develop a flow diagram with a precise description of the risk at the individual points of the diagram. As with the quantitative risk assessment, the uncertainties are to be presented. Since it is too ambitious for an EU-FORA project to show all the risks associated with wild boar meat, the plan is to cover at least one microbiological risk and one chemical risk (from contaminants) as examples.

Result

Final reports are attachedThe focus on this EU-FORA fellowship was to develop a qualitative risk assessment with flowchart as way of communicating the risk assessment transparently at each stage including the indication of data uncertainty and variability. Even though qualitative risk assessments are widely used, they do not always include uncertainty and variability and are not always presented in scenarios, as way of transparent communication. As case studies a microbial pathogen and a contaminant were chosen because they exemplify different types of risk. During this fellowship, a qualitative risk assessment flowchart was developed for Trichinella spp. and per-and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) for consumers of Latvia and Germany, from consuming wild boar meat. For each potential hazard, a literature search was done. For the flowchart, prevalence and concentration for each hazard were estimated, based on available literature. Furthermore, the flowchart was supplemented with additional nodes, that might increase or decrease the risk for the consumer. In the end, two different qualitative risk assessment flowcharts were developed, out of which, the Trichinella spp. risk assessment has been presented in two conferences. The results also showed for Trichinella spp.that there is a difference in risks for Trichinella infection in Germany and Latvia, based on the prevalence of the parasite and regulations.
Type of project

Third-party funded project

Areas of research

Internationale Zusammenarbeit / Gesundheit von Mensch, Tier und Umwelt (One Health)

Organisational units and partners

Lead unit: Epidemiologie, Statistik und Expositionsmodellierung (33)
Contact persons: PDshort foroutside lecturer Dr. Christine Müller-Graf
Involved BfR partners: Internationale Angelegenheiten, Biologische Sicherheit
External partner: Institute of Food Safety, Animal Health and Environment

Funding body and grant number

Europäische Behörde für Lebensmittelsicherheit
EUBA/EFSAshort forEuropean Food Safety Authority/2023/ENREL/01-GA11

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