The Use of Multi-criteria Decision Analysis in Food Safety Risk-benefit Assessment

Juliana M. Ruzante, Khara Grieger, Katherine Woodward, Elisabetta Lambertini, Barbara Kowalcyk Biblographic citation: Food Protection Trends, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 132-139, Mar 2017 Volume 37, Issue 2: Pages 132–139

Complex decisions call for a wide set of decision-support tools. Risk-benefit assessment (RBAs) is an emerging topic in the area of food safety as decision makers begin to realize that a unilateral focus on risks might be insufficient to make effective decisions in real-world situations. However, existing RBA approaches focus only on the adverse or beneficial health impacts of changes in policies and interventions and lack a more comprehensive and pragmatic evaluation of other criteria, beyond public health, that might influence the risk manager’s decision. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods are a promising alternative for handling complex decisions that need to account for multiple, diverse, and potentially conflicting criteria. In the past decade, MCDA has been used to explicitly balance the risks and benefits associated with drugs and medical devices, as well as with certain environmental decisions, but it has not yet been used in the area of food safety. Therefore, this paper presents an MCDA approach, illustrated by a hypothetical case study, that could be used to assess the risk and benefits of selected food safety interventions.

Subscribe Today

Subscribe to Food Protection Trends to stay up to date on the information you need, including scientific research and articles reporting on a variety of food safety and quality topics.

Request Permission to Reuse Content

This link will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center where you can submit a request to reuse IAFP’s content found in our publications. Please note that no part of any publications may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without prior permission from IAFP.