Risk Assessment of Foodborne Contaminants – online course

Your outcome

Once you have completed the course, you will be able to:

• Describe the international principles for chemical and microbiological risk analysis.
• Explain the principles for surveillance and control of chemical substances and harmful microorganisms throughout the food production chain.
• Analyse relevant data (e.g. monitoring/surveillance data and laboratory results) and interpret these for risk assessment.
• Develop simple quantitative risk assessments and interpret the results of risk assessments made by others.
• Participate actively in the assessment and management of foodborne risks.
• Recommend further investigations or implementation of measures to ensure effective prevention and control, and ensure that sustainability is not compromised through such measures.
• Summarise and present the results of epidemiological studies and risk analyses to various groups, including national and international authorities, food manufacturers and consumers.
• Recommend activities that can address current national and international food safety issues.

Outcome for your organization

Your organization gets an employee who will be able to:

• Identify potential hazards occurring in specific food products.
• Identify and analyse relevant data to assess the risk of such hazards in food – how dangerous is it? What are the consequences?
• Propose options to mitigate such hazards.
• Balancing actions to optimize food safety and sustainable food production.
• React to national and international food safety issues.

The course is part of the Master’s programme ‘Master of Sustainable and Safe Food Production‘.

You can follow the course as part of the Master’s programme or you can follow it as a single course. Please note, that to get most out of this course, we recommend that you have passed two other courses linked to the Master’s programme. See more under prerequisites.

Part of the Master’s programme

If you wish to follow the course as part of the Master of Sustainable and Safe Food Production, please go to the Master’s programme page and sign up for the Master’s programme.

Single course

If you wish to follow this course as a single course, please sign up by clicking the button ‘Add to cart’ in the top of the page. When you click ‘proceed to checkout’ you can also attach your documentation to apply for admission if you are not admitted yet. You will not be charged for any master courses until you know if your application has been approved.

Admission

To be admitted to this course, you must:

• have achieved a relevant medium-cycle education (a professional bachelor’s degree or the like) or a long-cycle higher education programme
• have a minimum of two years of work experience in the food science and technology field

Furthermore, you must have a solid foundation in the natural sciences (biology, chemistry, mathematics) as well as an understanding of technical processes in food production lines.

Recommended prerequisites

We recommend that you complete the courses ‘Chemical Food Safety’ and ‘Microbial Food Safety in a Global Perspective’ prior to following this course.

Education session

The course is taught online, the language of instruction is English.

The education sessions consist of e-lectures, Q&A sessions, assignments, casework and a final report.

The e-lectures are available online which means that you can watch them whenever from wherever.

Furthermore, you are offered weekly live Q&A sessions to get in dialogue with the course lecturer and fellow participants.

The majority of the course material will be provided during the course (selected chapters from textbooks, scientific articles, popular science articles, newspaper article, reference webpages).

Information about the software that will be used for the quantitative risk assessments will be provided at course start up.

Exam

The exam consists of an oral exam (50%) and the submission of two reports describing self-selected case studies; one in chemical (25%) and one in microbiological risk assessment (25%). The reports must be written in English

The course is offered in the autumn in even years (2024, 2026 etc.)

All students are required to pay tuition fees. The prices for the different types of courses are listed below for the Spring 2026 semester.

Prices for EU citizens:

Course of 5 ECTS points: 10000 DKK

Course of 7,5 ECTS points: 15000 DKK

Course of 10 ECTS points: 20000 DKK

Master project of 15 ECTS points 35000 DKK

Full Master’s programme: 125000 DKK

Prices for non-EU citizens:

Course of 5 ECTS points: 13800 DKK

Course of 7,5 ECTS points: 20700 DKK

Course of 10 ECTS points: 27600 DKK

Master project of 15 ECTS points 46400 DKK

Full Master’s programme: 170600 DKK

The state subsidy for part-time education is determined in the Finance Act for one year at a time. DTU reserves the right to make any adjustments to the participant payment.

Payment terms

When you sign up for one of our courses your payment should preferably be made by credit card at our website.

You can also choose invoice payment with a payment term of 30 days. Be aware that invoices will be issued in DKK. Payment transfer in EUR is possible if more convenient to you. However, remember to include the invoice number in the transfer information.

You can only participate in the class once the payment of tuition fee has been registered. We reserve the right to deregister the participant in the event of non-payment. Courses may be cancelled due to insufficient enrolments, for example. In case of cancellation of a purchased course or module, the tuition fee is refunded.