Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy Risk Assessment: The UK experience

• Published in: Risk analysis Vol. 25; no. 3; pp. 519 - 532
• Main Author: Grist, Eric P. M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 350 Main Street , Malden , MA 02148 , USA , and 9600 Garsington Road , Oxford OX4 2DQ , UK Blackwell Publishing, Inc 01.06.2005; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Animals; Bovine spongiform encephalopathy; BSE; Cattle; Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome - epidemiology; Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome - etiology; Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome - transmission; Encephalopathy, Bovine Spongiform - epidemiology; Encephalopathy, Bovine Spongiform - etiology; Encephalopathy, Bovine Spongiform - transmission; Food Chain; Food Contamination; Humans; mad cow disease; model assumptions; Models, Biological; quantitative risk assessment; Risk Assessment; Species Specificity; uncertainty; United Kingdom - epidemiology; vCJD; British Isles
• ISSN: 0272-4332; 1539-6924
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2005.00619.x

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) risk assessments undertaken in the United Kingdom have mainly had the objective of determining the risks posed to humans from exposure to the causal agents associated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and variant Creutzfeld‐Jakob disease (vCJD). In this article, I examine 19 of these risk assessments published to date and consider how their results might be influenced by underlying model assumptions and methodology. Three separate aspects common to all the assessments are infective load estimation, exposure pathway identification, and risk estimation. These are each discussed in detail.