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The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) provides independent scientific advice to the EU risk managers in relation to legislation and policies in all fields which have a direct or indirect impact on food and feed safety. The EFSA Scientific Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ Panel) provides independent scientific advice on biological hazards in relation to food safety and food-borne diseases. This paper aims to give an overview of the recent EFSA BIOHAZ Panel activities that used predictive microbiology. In four scientific outputs (three opinions and one report), bacterial growth during storage of meat and pre-packed fishery products was predicted using available predictive microbiology models and software. In another scientific opinion, a predictive model for thermal destruction of viruses was developed and further used to evaluate heat treatments that could be applied to live bivalve molluscs to eliminate pathogenic microorganisms. It is concluded that predictive microbiology has great value in risk assessment and in risk-based food safety management.

The Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ) is a scientific panel of the European Food Safety Authority that provides independent advice and performs risk assessment (RA) on biological hazards in the food and feed chain. The scientific outputs carried out during 2012–2016, covering a wide range of biological hazards for food safety, are presented in this review. The RA methodology applied by BIOHAZ Panel has evolved overtime, and varies from structured qualitative RA to the application of quantitative microbiological RA whenever possible and appropriate. Some of the future challenges envisaged include the new risks due to changes in food consumption and habits, the use of molecular typing methods for RA and the improvement in methodology via enhanced data collection for RA and integration of new methodologies.

At EU level, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is the body responsible for risk assessment in the field of food and feed safety. Following a request from European Union (EU) risk managers, the EFSA Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ) provided, for the first time, two EU-wide farm-to-fork quantitative microbiological risk assessments (QMRA), with regard to Salmonella in slaughter and breeder pigs and Campylobacter in broilers. The Scientific Opinion on a QMRA of Salmonella in pigs represented a major step forward in terms of modelling from farm to consumption as it took into account the variability between and within EU Member States. This QMRA model was developed to estimate the prevalence of infection/contamination and the microbial load from the farm to the point of consumption (exposure) and then estimating the probability of infection. It was used to investigate the effect of interventions to control Salmonella in pigs at different points of the food chain and resulted in a hierarchy of suggested on farm and slaughterhouse control measures, with estimates of the reduction of human cases. To model the effect of interventions from farm to fork on the incidence of human campylobacteriosis, a QMRA model was developed and used in the framework of the Scientific Opinion on a QMRA of Campylobacter in broiler meat. Reductions to the public health risk of campylobacteriosis could be achieved through a variety of interventions, both in primary production or at the slaughterhouse, with different impacts. Reductions of public health risk using targets at primary production or microbiological criteria were also estimated through modelling using additional models. QMRA of food-borne pathogens at European level has proven a useful/good tool to enable risk managers to evaluate the feasibility and the cost-benefit ratio of introducing control measures and targets to further protect public health of European consumers.