The food industry has relied on generally recognized safe harbors in manufacturing to assure delivery of safe foods. These provide a ‘blanket’ framework for defining performance standards, and have been established over time by industry consensus or regulation. They are typically expressed as the number of log-reductions of a hazard of concern (e.g., 12-log reduction of proteolytic Clostridium botulinumin low acid ambient stable foods or 5-log pathogen reduction for juices). Although such an approach is convenient as it allows for establishment of process/product criteria without detailed knowledge of the level of raw material contamination or the variability of the process, it may lead to misinterpretation of what the performance standard actually means and what it does in terms of assuring consumer protection.  The use of ‘end-point’ targets to define the safe establishment of performance standards is commonly used in other industry sectors. In the drinking water area, the World Health Organization has established health-based targets based on a tolerable burden of disease, and derived performance standards for household treatment options derived from such targets. However, in the food industry, in spite of the existence, for more than a decade, of well-defined ‘endpoint’ risk management metrics such as Food Safety Objectives (FSO) or Performance Objectives (PO), the establishment of science-based performance standards has not been fully realized yet. The definition of science-based performance standards based on metrics such as FSO/PO requires cooperation between key stakeholders, e.g., industry, regulators, researchers, and key opinion formers.

This roundtable will bring together relevant stakeholders to address these issues and to discuss what is needed to realize the establishment of ‘end-point’ targets to define science-based performance standards.