Alternative BSE risk assessment methodology for beef and beef offal imported into Japan

The Food Safety Commission (FSC) of Japan, established in July 2003, has its own initiative to conduct risk assessments on food stuffs known as "self-tasking assessment". Within this framework, the FSC decided to conduct a risk assessment of beef and beef offal imported into Japan from countries with no previous BSE reports; thus, a methodology was formed to suit to this purpose. This methodology was partly based on the previous assessments of Japanese domestic beef and beef imported from U.S.A./Canada, but some modifications were made. Other organizations' assessment methods, such as those used for BSE status assessment in live cattle by the OIE and EFSA's GBR, were also consulted. In this review, the authors introduce this alternative methodology, which reflects (1) the risk of live cattle in the assessed country including temporal risks of BSE invasion and domestic propagation, with the assessment results verified by surveillance data, and (2) the risk of beef and beef offal consisting of cumulative BSE risk by types of slaughtering and meat production processes implemented and the status of mechanically recovered meat production. Other possible influencing factors such as atypical BSE cases were also reviewed. The key characteristic of the current assessment is a combination of the time-sequential risk level of live cattle and qualitative risk level of meat production at present in an assessed country.