2. Approaches to overestimating contamination risk

This section discusses the successive approximations used to assess the risk of food contamination, starting from the most pessimistic assumptions. This iterative approach progressively makes the model more complex, depending on the results obtained in the previous step (is even an overestimated contamination acceptable?) and on the knowledge available. It should be noted, however, that increasing complexity does not necessarily guarantee greater accuracy in the final estimate of contamination. Indeed, a complex, more realistic model will be much more sensitive to uncertainty about the initial parameters. There is an optimum that we propose to define for single-layer and multi-layer materials.