Managing Food Chain Risks

Project Status: Completed
Type of Project: Research Project
Principal Investigator: Prof Richard Shepherd, University of Surrey (Email)
Publications, Data and Other Outputs

Policy and Practice Note
Impact of research on policy and practice

Objectives

This is a multidisciplinary project which brings together natural science modelling of risks and uncertainties in the food chain with social science approaches to understanding consumer behaviours, risk communication and participatory processes. In it we will design, develop and evaluate participatory processes and tools for involving stakeholders, particularly those in rural communities, throughout the management and mitigation of a food safety issue or risk event, ensuring that full account is taken of a wide range of potential social, economic and political impacts as well as the more immediate public health related and safety issues.

This will be achieved through the development of a system for modelling technical risk and uncertainty using a state of the art probabilistic tool using 2D Monte Carlo and Bayesian methods to quantify variability and uncertainty. There will be inputs into this process from modular food chain models and studies estimating the impact of risks on consumer behaviour. There will also be close interactions with the development of communication and decision support interfaces based on a mental models approach and throughout the project stakeholder participatory process research will be used both to define the interfaces needed and evaluate the outcomes from the project. Three risk case studies will be used in the development and evaluation of the overall system.