Informe del Comité Científico de la Agencia Española de Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (AESAN) sobre la programación de toma de muestras de peligros biológicos en los controles oficiales

Abstract

The General State Administration establishes the food safety control and cooperation mechanisms with the competent authorities of the administrations responsible for official controls. In order to improve the quality and homogeneity of official controls related to biological hazards in food, the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) and the autonomous communities have a Guidance document for the scheduling of biological hazard sampling within the framework of the National Plan for Official Control of the Food Chain 2021-2025, which establishes a semi-quantitative model that takes into account, on the one hand, the impact on health, considering incidence and severity, and, on the other, the prevalence, composed of data from non-compliant samples and alert notifications. At AESAN’s request, the Scientific Committee has assessed this Guidance document, and the final conclusion is that this Guidance document is suitable at the present time, for the intended purpose. Specifically, the criteria based on the calculation of the health impact are considered valid for the biological hazards studied. Regarding the prevalence calculation, different percentile levels could be considered for the parameters of percentage of non-compliant samples and number of alert notifications. The use of the correction factor for inactivating treatment for the correction of the score associated with prevalence is positively assessed. Regarding the distribution of food categories and hazards analysed, it is considered suitable and it is recommended to re-evaluate this distribution considering average consumption data of the different food categories in each of the autonomous communities. The procedure to calculate the number of samples and the risk score intervals used for the different hazard-food pairs is also considered suitable for the intended purpose. Finally, some suggestions are made for revising some criteria in the future in the event that information is available, and it is indicated that the Guidance document should be updated periodically in the light of the experience of its application, progress in scientific knowledge, changes in legislation and guidelines and tools on prioritisation and frequency of risk-based inspection that may be developed at national or European Union level.