Purpose: Estimate the risk of Salmonellosis from Australian pork burgers.
Methods: A two-dimensional stochastic model, separating variability and uncertainty was constructed, to describe changes in the prevalence and concentration of Salmonella on pork mince/burgers between the time of purchase at retail and consumption. The model includes the effects of time and temperature on i) potential for Salmonella growth during retail display, consumer transport and domestic storage and ii) inactivation of Salmonella during cooking, to iii) enable estimation of the probability of illness from consumption of a pork burger in Australia. A ‘worst-case’ scenario for the expected number of illnesses from pork burgers per year was estimated by assuming that all pork mince sold in Australia during 2012 (4.3 million kilograms) was consumed as pork burgers.
Results: The mean probability of illness for Salmonellosis from consumption of a 100 g Australian pork burger was estimated at 7.25 × 10-9 per burger (with a 95% uncertainty credible interval between 7.44 × 10-10 and 2.76 × 10-8), or 0.73 illnesses per 100,000,000 burgers consumed on average. This would lead to an expected 0.32 cases of Salmonellosis in Australia caused from pork burgers during one year among a population of ~24 million people.
Significance: This model can be modified to estimate the risk in other countries by changing the country-specific inputs.