The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) is an international expert scientific committee that is administered jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). It has been meeting since 1956, initially to evaluate the safety of food additives. Its work now also includes the evaluation of contaminants, naturally occurring toxicants and residues of veterinary drugs in food.

During the past ten years, considerable advancements have been achieved in the development of quantitative risk assessments for microbial pathogens in the food supply. More recently, new risk-based management concepts and approaches have been introduced, including the application of food safety objectives (FSOs), performance objectives (POs), and performance criteria (PCs) in order to relate public health goals to the level of stringency required for food safety measures and systems. From these parameters, food safety controls such as process criteria, product criteria and microbiological criteria may be derived. Risk assessments provide the basis for risk-based management options, however, guidelines, methods and practical examples of using risk assessment outputs toward these goals are lacking.

Listeria monocytogenes is a gram positive, facultatively anaerobic, psychrotrophic bacterial species that is capable of causing life-threatening septicaemia and meningitis in adult humans, and infections in foetuses and neonates that can lead to spontaneous abortions, foetal death, and septicaemia. This is typically a disease of specific high risk subpopulations with depressed or altered immune responses due to age, pregnancy, medical interventions, or chronic, immunosuppressive diseases (e.g., diabetes, HIV infections). In the past 20 years it has been established that the primary route of transmission for this pathogenic microorganism is food, with ready-to-eat foods that support the growth of the bacterium representing the greatest risk to the consumer; i.e., foods with high levels of L. monocytogenes are much more likely to...