Researchers have developed a new quantitative risk assessment model for foodborne illness outbreak investigations to more sufficiently determine the underlying causes of an outbreak and identify actions that could be taken to prevent future outbreaks. A 2019 Salmonella outbreak linked to melons was used as a case study to demonstrate the utility of the risk assessment model.
The model, called the Quantitative Risk Assessment–Epidemic Curve Prediction Model (QRA-EC), was used to evaluate the impact of various root cause hypotheses—representing different contamination sources and food safety system failures in the melon supply chain—on the predicted number and timeline of illnesses.