Evaluating hazards and risks assessments are  critical tools for food safety professionals developing and following their food safety plans. Risk scores can be developed using the expertise of your team, providing their perception of risk from their perspective and experiences. Though valuable, a risk scoring exercise based solely on perception is only capable of yielding a “perceived risk” score. While perception is a good start, an actionable risk assessment should be based on actual outcomes and experiences. The availability of hard data, collected over time, has a dramatic impact on validating perceptions.