"As participation in the food safety paradigm increasingly relies on risk analysis terminology, tools, and methods, we consider the 'core' courses to provide a baseline level of knowledge necessary for all food safety professionals from industrial, manufacturing, legal, legislative, academic, public health, and government backgrounds," said Wes Long, FDA Risk Analysis and Extramural Liaison and JIFSAN Liaison Staff member.

Registration has been extended until January 2, 2002, for two food safety risk analysis core courses offered in January. On January 7, the one-day "Overview of Risk Analysis" sets the stage for the core curriculum. From January 8 through 10, an "Introduction to Food Safety Risk Assessment" course will provide hands-on experience in both quantitative and qualitative techniques.

An intermediate course, "Quantitative Risk Assessment Methods," to be held January 22 through 25, will study spreadsheet models, probability distributions, application of Monte Carlo simulation to food safety risk assessment problems, and construction of simple probabilistic scenario analysis models. Registration for this course continues through January 8.

For more information and to register, see http://www.jifsan.umd.edu/pro_training.htm.

Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition

University of Maryland

Food and Drug Administration

FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition

FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services