Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Food Control journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodcont Quantifying the impact of food safety criteria included in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency risk assessment model for food establishments through Expert Elicitation Manon Racicot a,* , Romina Zanabria b , Alexandre Leroux b , Sunny Ng b , Mathieu Cormier c , Ashwani Tiwari b , Solomon Aklilu b , Ryan Currie b , Julie Arsenault d , Mansel Griffiths e , Rick Holley f , Tom Gill g , Sylvain Charlebois g , Sylvain Quessy d a Canadian Food Inspection Agency, C.P. 5000, St-Hyacinthe, Québec, J2S 7C6, Canada b Canadian Food Inspection Agency, 1400 Merivale, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0Y9, Canada c Canadian Food Inspection Agency, 2001 Robert Bourassa, Montreal, Québec, H3A 3N2, Canada d Faculté de Médecine Vétérinaire, Université de Montréal, 3200 Sicotte, St-Hyacinthe, Québec, J2S 2M2, Canada e University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada f University of Manitoba, 228 Ellis Building, Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2N2, Canada g Dalhousie University, PO Box 15000, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 4R2, Canada ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Relative risk Food safety criteria Risk assessment model Expert elicitation ABSTRACT The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is developing a risk assessment model aimed at quantifying the food safety risk associated with food establishments under its jurisdiction. To support the development of this model, the current study was undertaken to quantify the relative importance of selected criteria considered for inclusion in the model. This process also aimed at estimating the risk associated with specific clusters of criteria. Overall, 173 criteria were presented to experts during a two-round face-to-face expert elicitation to estimate their relative risk to human health. Twenty-nine Canadian experts participated in the expert elicitation including members from academia (31%), industry (31%), and government (38%). A good consensus on the relative risks given to most criteria and clusters of criteria was achieved, and experts assessed them as significantly affecting the risk related to a food establishment. None of the experts expressed opposition to the inclusion of any criterion or to the way they were clustered. Experts assigned a relative risk of ≤4, of 4–8, and of ≥8–67% (116), 29.5% (51), and 3.5% (6) of the 173 criteria identified, respectively. Those having the highest impact on establishment food safety risk were: historical food safety recalls and lack of compliance for the sanitation program, the control of critical control points, followed by the equipment maintenance and calibration program, and the general food hygiene program. Having a sampling plan with trend analysis and follow-up actions was considered as an im- portant mitigation factor. As a result, the median values calculated for each criterion and cluster will be used in the new Canadian Food Inspection Agency Establishment-based risk assessment model to support the allocation of inspection resources based on risk. 1. Introduction The mandate of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is to safeguard food, animal, and plant health, thereby protecting the health and well-being of Canadians, the environment, and the economy. To further improve the delivery of its mandate, the CFIA is modernizing its risk-based approach to food establishment oversight, by developing a more efficient process to help prioritize the allocation of food inspec- tion resources to areas with the highest risk. This includes the development and integration of a quantitative risk assessment model at the establishment level, which uses a mathematical algorithm to quantify the food safety risk associated with food establishments under CFIA's jurisdiction. Within this context, a food establishment was de- fined as any place, including a conveyance, where a commodity/food product is produced/manufactured, prepared, stored, packaged or la- beled. This definition does not include private homes or those facilities conducting operations that fall outside the scope of the CFIA (e.g. agricultural, retail, restaurants and/or food service operations). In https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2018.05.034 Received 22 March 2018; Received in revised form 19 May 2018; Accepted 19 May 2018 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: manon.racicot@inspection.gc.ca (M. Racicot). Food Control 92 (2018) 450–463 Available online 19 May 2018 0956-7135/ © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. T