Can You Defend Your Risk Assessment?

“Hi, how’s it going”. This is a nicety, and most of us know it’s not truly a question. I feel like “we do a risk assessment” is a similar kind of knee-jerk, generally meaningless response to “what do you do when (potentially bad food safety thing) happens?”. And I’m getting sick of the irritated look people give me when I ask them to describe what goes into their risk assessment. Because today the ‘risk assessment’ seems to be the perfunctory bandage reaction to explain away why a firm felt they could continue doing something , rather than a true assessment of risk. 

This is not the first time I’m raising this concern. My November 2022 article

Risk and Hazard in Fresh Produce: Synonyms or Semantics? - Quality Assurance & Food Safety (sorry if you have to go through 3 forms to access this) references another article written 5 years prior. Gretchen followed up in March of 2023 with Risk Assessment and Hazard Analysis: Turning Instinct into Action - Quality Assurance & Food Safety, expanding upon the soft skills in assessing risk. Then there’s my ‘haphazard analysis’ blog post (the title still makes me smile). So not a new topic. Why then are people still saying ‘I did a risk assessment’ like it’s a casual date instead of your wedding day?

Imagine you are on the witness stand needing to defend your risk assessment. Does it hold up? If you need to answer the question “what was the risk”- can you answer that? Was the risk 1/100 or 1/100,000? And what is the risk you’re willing to accept? I’m increasingly concerned that when companies claim to have “done a risk assessment” they are not thinking in these terms at all. They are thinking in a binary fashion, seeking to answer “is this ok or not”. And the answer seems to depend more on company culture than on science. This cuts both ways- I have seen food safety idealists say ‘no’ to everything, blaming the risk assessment. I have seen people say ‘ok’ to things that I would not have let slide– because they have a risk assessment. 

Scientists may be perplexed. There is a structure around conducting a risk assessment. Risk managers pose the questions, and they decide on the acceptable level of risk as informed by the risk assessment and incorporating other considerations. Many company food safety people are playing the role of risk manager, assessor and communicator. And the decisions are often hazard, not risk based.

After seeing recurring confusion regarding the difference between hazard and risk, we developed a training on this topic- hazard vs risk- and fold it into most of our client engagements. It’s proven so popular that we’ve developed a hybrid training along with Food Safety CTS that allows people to toggle between bite-size content at their leisure, and focused discussion sessions with our technical team so they can apply the learnings to their situation.

It’s only once you understand how a risk differs from a hazard that you can embark on a ‘risk assessment’ that is defensible without over or underreacting to a certain situation. 

“Hi, how’s it going”. This is a nicety, and most of us know it’s not truly a question. I feel like “we do a risk assessment” is a similar kind of knee-jerk, generally meaningless response to “what do you do when (potentially bad food safety thing) happens?”. And I’m getting sick of the irritated look people give me when I ask them to describe what goes into their risk assessment. Because today the ‘risk assessment’ seems to be the perfunctory bandage reaction to explain away why a firm felt they could continue doing something , rather than a true assessment of risk. 

This is not the first time I’m raising this concern. My November 2022 article

Risk and Hazard in Fresh Produce: Synonyms or Semantics? - Quality Assurance & Food Safety (sorry if you have to go through 3 forms to access this) references another article written 5 years prior. Gretchen followed up in March of 2023 with Risk Assessment and Hazard Analysis: Turning Instinct into Action - Quality Assurance & Food Safety, expanding upon the soft skills in assessing risk. Then there’s my ‘haphazard analysis’ blog post (the title still makes me smile). So not a new topic. Why then are people still saying ‘I did a risk assessment’ like it’s a casual date instead of your wedding day?

Imagine you are on the witness stand needing to defend your risk assessment. Does it hold up? If you need to answer the question “what was the risk”- can you answer that? Was the risk 1/100 or 1/100,000? And what is the risk you’re willing to accept? I’m increasingly concerned that when companies claim to have “done a risk assessment” they are not thinking in these terms at all. They are thinking in a binary fashion, seeking to answer “is this ok or not”. And the answer seems to depend more on company culture than on science. This cuts both ways- I have seen food safety idealists say ‘no’ to everything, blaming the risk assessment. I have seen people say ‘ok’ to things that I would not have let slide– because they have a risk assessment. 

Scientists may be perplexed. There is a structure around conducting a risk assessment. Risk managers pose the questions, and they decide on the acceptable level of risk as informed by the risk assessment and incorporating other considerations. Many company food safety people are playing the role of risk manager, assessor and communicator. And the decisions are often hazard, not risk based.

After seeing recurring confusion regarding the difference between hazard and risk, we developed a training on this topic- hazard vs risk- and fold it into most of our client engagements. It’s proven so popular that we’ve developed a hybrid training along with Food Safety CTS that allows people to toggle between bite-size content at their leisure, and focused discussion sessions with our technical team so they can apply the learn

ings to their situation.

It’s only once you understand how a risk differs from a hazard that you can embark on a ‘risk assessment’ that is defensible without over or underreacting to a certain situation.