FDA-iRISK: A fast tool for food safety

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This image is the FDA-iRISK logo. It is a box filled with varying, merging shades of blue, with “FDA-iRISK” and “food safety modeling tool” appearing in large white type in the center. In the background are faded equations placed at angles for an artistic effect, denoting equations actually used in FDA-iRISK, and in the upper right corner, a faded globe, denoting FDA-iRISK’s global reach.

FDA created this new tool to answer a key question: Which foods and contaminants are public-health priorities? Collaborating with many partners, the agency developed FDA-iRISK into an on-line system that can (1) simultaneously rank public-health risks from multiple contaminants, in multiple foods; (2) calculate how contamination and illness from each would change with changes in food-production practices; and (3) do it faster, via pre-built mathematical functions and templates.

Risk models that estimate public-health outcomes of food contamination and effectiveness of interventions provide crucial information for policy and prioritization decisions. FDA-iRISK automates the time- and labor-intensive process of developing mathematical models to simulate risk and intervention in food-production chains, giving regulatory and industry decision-makers a systematic, faster way of comparing and ranking risks in the food supply and predicting best solutions.

FDA collaborated with the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Risk Sciences International, and others to make FDA-iRISK widely available, for free, including to food-exporting countries. Since its October 2012 release, the FDA-iRISK site has garnered more than 1,000 visits representing every continent. FDA-iRISK also fills the need for a systematic repository and knowledge base of risks and solutions in the global food supply.

Websites:

Visit FDA-iRISK at http://foodrisk.org/exclusives/fda-irisk-a-comparative-
risk-assessment-tool/.
To access FDA-iRISK and detailed instructions on how to use it, please visit http://irisk.foodrisk.org.
For more information about FDA-iRISK, please see FDA's fact sheets for general audiences or technical audiences at http://www.fda.gov/Food/Science
Research/ResearchAreas/RiskAssessment SafetyAssessment/default.htm

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