Research hotspots and evolution trends of food safety risk assessment techniques and methods

Food safety incidents frequently occur in China and other countries. Food safety risk management has evolved from harm-based to risk-based approaches to control risks more scientifically and effectively. Risk assessment is at the core of risk control and provides a scientific basis for the development of risk management measures. Therefore, analyzing the research status and development trends of food safety risk assessment technologies and methods is important for improving food safety risk assessment and risk management. In this study, CiteSpace software was used to analyze a knowledge graph of popular research topics in the field of food safety risk assessment over the past 14 years, identify research keywords, and provide centrality statistics. Food safety risk assessments primarily focus on in vitro high-throughput testing, computational toxicology, predictive microbiology, mechanistic research, and other technical methods. In the future, international coordination, cooperation, and cross-integration of relevant disciplines should be strengthened, and research on and application of innovative technologies for food safety risk assessment should be promoted. Research on food safety risk assessment technologies and methods is in an active development stage and has good prospects for further exploration and application.