Food Safety and Defense
To control the risks in the food supply we first need to understand them.
Introduction
Why does Food Safety and Defense need risk science?
Food is a basic human need. Access to a safe food supply is vital to the wellbeing of everybody. However, there continue to be threats to the food supply from contamination that poses harm. This contamination includes both chemical and biological hazards. Contamination occurs naturally, can be unintentionally introduced during production and processing, or added intentionally to cause harm to consumers. Whatever the source of contamination, there are two key questions – how much harm will this cause? And what can be done to reduce that harm? The food production chain is complex, with many interconnected processes that combine to lead to our food on a plate. This complexity makes answering the key questions almost impossible without the application of quantitative modelling to describe the relationships in the food chain that determine the risks to the consumer from contaminated food.
"From farm to plate,
make food safe."
by 2015 World Health Day (World Health Organization)
RSI and Food Safety and Defense
RSI's Motivation
RSI has a long history exploring risks associated with the food supply. RSI believes that sound science and robust models are key to supporting the difficult decisions that surround the food chain, including both food safety and food defense issues.
What is our expertise in Food Safety and Defense?
RSI is internationally recognised for our risk assessment work in the food sector. This includes extensive experience developing microbiological risk assessments, and chemical safety assessments, and developing models to explore the impacts of terrorist threats to the food supply from intentional adulteration. This includes a rare combination of expertise in microbiology, toxicology, statistics, computer modeling and engineering analysis, computer programming, and decision-support product development.
RSI has worked with UN FAO and WHO for over a decade supporting them in their pursuit of a safe food supply for all, and continues to provide risk assessment expertise to this important endeavour.
Serving You
Our expertise spans from supporting organisations in their development of risk models through data gathering and synthesis, to the development of customised models and tools to conduct quantitative risk assessments.
RSI Sectors
Chemical and Product Safety
RSI staff and affiliated scientists have an extensive background in epidemiology, toxicology, and pharmacology, that can help identify and characterize chemical risk and product safety. Clients include a variety of public and private sector organizations. Epidemiology: RSI has analyzed large and complex data sets to explore environmental, occupational...
Public Health
RSI has extensive experience modelling the risks and consequences associated with infectious disease spread amongst human and animal populations. We have worked with public health organizations in more than 175 countries to safeguard public health and help respond to potential threats to the population. RSI has been involved in a variety of projects...
Food Safety and Defense
Risk Sciences International has a team of internationally recognized experts with over 100 years of combined experience in human health risk assessment, quantitative microbiological risk assessment, and risk assessment methodology. RSI staff and affiliated scientists have a wealth of experience in the development of quantitative risk assessments and...
Climate Change and Adaptation
Risk Sciences International has extensive and unique experience in those key domains required to help organizations adapt to climate change: applied meteorology, engineering climatology, climate science, hydrology, social and behavioral science, risk assessment and management, and IT-based decision-support. RSI provides climate risk assessment and...
Agriculture
Approaches to measuring, characterizing, and managing risks and opportunities in the agricultural sector continue to evolve with time, thanks in part to the use of new technologies in the collection of data, and advancements in agriculture-related science and computing power for risk analysis. RSI’s experience in the Agricultural sector ranges...
Drug Safety and Effectiveness Monitoring
Risk Sciences International has significant experience managing drug safety to help related stakeholders ensure the health and well-being of the public. RSI has experience analyzing a wide variety of drugs across all demographics, using a range of analytic and modeling techniques including physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling. RSI’s...
Public Safety and Security
Risk Sciences International has comprehensive experience working with organizations to enhance public safety and security. Areas of expertise include non-biological hazards often associated with occupational health and safety issues, as well as emergency preparedness activities focusing on natural disaster, disease epidemic, or malicious acts. RSI has...
Urban Risk and Resiliency
The planning, design, and operation of the urban space requires multidisciplinary research and decision support to understand and mitigate the impact of hazards, natural or man-made, malicious or accidental. Risk Sciences International applies its expertise in extreme weather and climate change, infrastructure vulnerability...
Urban Risk and Resiliency
Public Safety and Security
Public Health
Food Safety and Defense
Drug Safety and Effectiveness Monitoring
Climate Change and Adaptation
Chemical and Product Safety
Agriculture
