Biological variability and exposure assessment

Predictive models are now commonly used for exposure assessment, with growth parameters defined for each microbial species. In this study, we tried to take into account microbial growth variability among strains of a single species. Bacillus cereus in pasteurized milk was chosen to illustrate the influence of the biological variability on the outcome of exposure assessment. Each parameter of the exposure assessment (growth parameters, shelf-life conditions) was characterized by a probability distribution describing variability and/or uncertainty. The impact of the intra-species variability on the result of the exposure assessment was then quantified and discussed. Two simple domestic shelf life conditions were tested. The results confirm that the biological variability has a great impact on the accuracy of the result and should not be systematically neglected.