Thank you for the question. This gives me the opportunity to try to explain something in a more condensed manner. It is a very complicated issue, so I will try to explain that quickly.
In doing a dietary risk assessment, as I mentioned in my presentation, there are usually two main areas we look at. One is the exposure. In this case we are talking about the residue that remains on the food. When we do the exposure assessment, we include all the populations--including children, seniors, pregnant women--according to their dietary intake: what their dietary behaviour will be, what types of foods they will be taking, and so on and so forth, in doing the exposure assessment for the rarest age group. So that's one part of the risk assessment.
The other part of the risk assessment, as I mentioned, is to look at the potential toxicity studies to identify if there is any potential health concern of somebody being exposed to that particular pesticide product. Once we identify from the toxicology database, we will look at what is considered to be an acceptable daily intake, which in layman's language is that when somebody is ingesting or consuming certain products that contain that residue for the whole duration of their lifetime, it is considered to be acceptable or doesn't pose any health concern. So in that sense, we're looking at the hazard associated or the potential health concern, if any, for somebody exposed to that chemical versus the exposure from the residues that are from the food or from the crops, whatever the people are ingesting.
So when we compare the two, we look at what are the differences, what are the comfort levels, if that's the right word. If we determine that at a certain level there's no health concern, and then the exposure scenario is well below that, then we would say that is an acceptable residue in the food consumption.
So tying it back to the questions that PMRA would identify if there is any health concern or not, when they refer that to us, we immediately look at doing the dietary assessment of that particular reference. Depending on how much data we have on hand, it could be a process that's very quick, because we already have all the information and we can do the assessment and so on, or it could be a longer process. If we don't have all the data, we'll have to gather all the data information to look at comparing the exposure from this particular residue versus what we consider the acceptable daily intake for that chemical or pesticide.
So when we compare the two, if it's considered acceptable, there will be no health concern for that.