Qualitative Risk Assessment

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Codex Alimentarius (Codex) and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) state that qualitative and quantitative risk assessments have equal validity. In this context “validity” means that, if all the requirements of each of the methods are equally well met, then these two methods are equally valid. This implies that, for these bodies at least, specific requirements must be met for acceptance as a valid qualitative risk assessment. This chapter describes such requirements, giving guidelines as to how they may be achieved and indicating some of the difficulties encountered and issues that arise. In both the Codex and OIE systems, a risk assessment is the term used to describe the complete process of assessing a risk. In both systems it is broken down into several stages. Looking specifically at Codex, those stages include hazard identification and hazard characterization, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. Qualitative risk assessments have been used extensively in import risk assessments of food products intended for human consumption, especially those of animal origin. Specific issues concerned with qualitative risk assessments discussed in this chapter include the reasons for use of a qualitative risk assessment, the differences between a complete qualitative risk assessment and the specific step of qualitative risk characterization (sometimes less distinct than in a quantitative risk assessment), and the complementary nature of qualitative and quantitative risk assessments.