The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published a range of guidance and methodological publications on topics related to risk assessment. They are available through the EFSA website. A selection is presented in the following slides.

A guidance on communication of uncertainty in scientific assessments can be accessed here. The document is also available in the resources tab.

A guidance on expert knowledge elicitation can be accessed here. The document is also available in the resources tab.

For any risk assessment, finding the right data is crucial. Ideally, a risk assessment is informed by complete data including peer reviewed studies, official data on occurrence of food safety hazards and trade and production data. However, in many cases data are limited. In these cases, expert opinion and less formal data sources are also very valuable. Here are a few potential data sources.

Peer reviewed studies provide strong evidence for risk assessments. However, they are not always available for all food safety hazards and all food commodities.

Textbooks can provide useful information, particularly for hazard characterizations. If possible refer to recent textbooks as this kind of information changes over time.

Governments may publish relevant data about food safety on their websites.

These are particularly valuable for hazards where there is very little published information. Expert opinion can be biased and should not be relied on in isolation when other information is available. The EFSA has published guidance on methods for expert knowledge elicitation, it can be accessed here or in the resources tab.

These may include data sources on trade statistics or food hazards.

Finding the peer-reviewed studies you need can be challenging. Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions about sourcing peer-reviewed studies.

One way of finding peer-reviewed studies is to use a bibliography database. Examples of these include “Web of Science” or “Google Scholar”. “Google Scholar” is useful because it is free to access. However, some studies may appear on “Google Scholar” that are not peer-reviewed. You can access “Google Scholar” through this link.

Some peer-reviewed studies are open access. Open access studies can be downloaded by anyone. In other cases, peer-reviewed studies have to be purchased or the user must have a licence. Government departments can buy subscriptions to access peer-reviewed studies.

Recent studies are best because the authors should consider and discuss the previous studies relevant to their work. In some cases, there may be no recent studies on the hazard of interest.

All journals are not equal. In general, journals with a higher impact factor publish work of higher quality. However, this is not the only measure of quality. Some journals are of a high quality but in a relatively narrow field and therefore not cited as much. Beware of journals that are not peer reviewed.

We saw in earlier slides that some sources of information provide stronger evidence than others.

Quality publications will list the author and usually the organisation that they work for. Be careful of publications that do not list the author. Also consider the credentials of the author and whether they could be biased.

This links with the evidence hierarchy. Peer-reviewed information is considered more credible.

If the information has a reference list or refers to known experts, it is likely to be more credible than information without any references.