Food Safety Risk Ranking and Prioritization Training (MCDA)

Duration - 5 Days (Flexible)

Format - In person or Virtual

Language: English, French

Description

This course provides a practical, FAO/WHO-aligned pathway for food safety risk ranking and prioritization. Participants first build a transparent risk ranking focused on public health impact by defining scope, developing risk profiles, selecting criteria, and scoring food–hazard pairs using qualitative or semi-quantitative methods. Ranking emphasizes likelihood, severity, exposure, and disease burden to estimate relative risk.

The course then advances to risk prioritization using multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA). Here, participants expand beyond public health impact to include implementability, cost, equity, timeliness, regulatory feasibility, supply chain reach, and surveillance readiness. Teams practice setting criteria weights, constructing prioritization matrices, and running sensitivity checks to reveal trade-offs and ensure robust decisions. Case-based labs use realistic datasets and structured expert judgment for data-limited contexts.

Throughout, we stress documentation of assumptions and uncertainty, participatory stakeholder engagement, and clear communication to risk managers and policy makers. By the end, participants can run an end-to-end process: produce a defensible risk ranking centered on health risk, then apply MCDA to convert rankings into a prioritized, actionable portfolio linked to standards, surveillance, inspection, and targeted consumer advice. Templates, checklists, and slide-ready visuals accelerate adoption.

What You’ll Learn in risk ranking and priotization training

Distinguish risk ranking (public health impact) from risk prioritization (MCDA including feasibility, cost, equity, and readiness).
Define scope and decision context; develop combinations of hazards and foods.
Select ranking criteria and weights; compile data on likelihood, severity, exposure, and burden.
Apply qualitative or semi-quantitative scoring to generate transparent rankings; conduct sensitivity checks.
Design and run MCDA for prioritization; set and justify weights; build prioritization matrices; test robustness.
Document assumptions, variability, and uncertainty; manage expert judgment in data-limited settings.Link priorities to risk management options, resources, and monitoring indicators.
Communicate results using stakeholder-friendly visuals, decision briefs, and implementation roadmaps.

Training Agenda Snapshot

Topic	Description
Topic 1	Foundations and Scoping
Topic 2	Risk Ranking Methods and Practice
Topic 3	MCDA for Risk Prioritization
Topic 4	Governance, Stakeholders, and Implementation
Topic 5	Capstone and Country Adaptation

Who Should Attend the risk ranking and prioritization training

Food safety officials, risk assessors, risk managers, epidemiologists, lab leads, and policy analysts in national food control systems. Also suitable for donor projects and academic partners supporting government risk-based prioritization.

Certification

Participants will receive a Certificate of Completion recognizing their readiness to contribute meaningfully to Codex work.