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Rob Lake

Rob Lake

New Zealand food safety scientist and Chair of the WHO's Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group (FERG2), formerly Science Leader at ESR.

Sep 17, 2026

5:32
at an individual country level.
5:34
WHO has a requirement for these country-level estimates to be developed in a transparent and inclusive process.
5:43
And as part of the process, as we went through and developed initial estimates, we engaged and consulted with individual countries and presented them with our preliminary estimates, giving them the opportunity to review and engage with the process.
5:59
And that allowed the feedback and also, in some instances, the collation of additional data from the countries.
6:08
So a really important part of this process is that the results and all of the input data and the calculations are made available publicly through scientific publications, but also through WHO's own channels of communication.
6:23
Another really important component of the project, in addition to estimating the incidence of diseases caused by the hazards, is a small number of the hazards are 100% transmitted by food.
6:36
That's kind of a small proportion of the total.
8:42
So from all of this, what would you say kind of the really key messages are across all the papers? And as well, what's kind of important to note as the big changes from the 2015 update?

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