Tracing Pathogens in the Food Chain

Stanley Brul is Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Amsterdam. Pina Fratamico is a Research Microbiologist at the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. Tom McMeekin is Emeritus Professor of Microbiology at the University of Tasmania.

Part 1 Foodborne pathogen surveillance and outbreak investigation: Surveillance for foodborne pathogens in humans; Systems for real-time, linked foodborne pathogen surveillance; Detection, investigation and control of outbreaks of foodborne disease; Attributing the burden of foodborne disease to specific sources of infection; Determining the economic costs and global burden of foodborne disease. Part 2 Subtyping of foodborne pathogens: Phenoytypic subtyping; Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and other commonly used molecular methods; Emerging bacterial subtyping methods; Development, validation and quality assurance of subtyping methods. Part 3 Molecular methods, genomics and other emerging approaches in the surveillance and study of foodborne pathogens: Sample preparation for detection by molecular biological methods; A comparison of molecular technologies and genomotyping for tracing and strain characterisation of Campylobacter isolates; Investigating foodborne pathogens using comparative genomics; Protein-based analysis and other new and emerging non-nucleic acid based methods; Virulotyping; Using ribotyping to trace foodborne aerobic sporeforming bacteria in the factory: A case study; Biotracing: A novel concept in food safety integrating microbiology knowledge, complex systems approaches and probabilistic modeling. Part 4 Tracing pathogens in particular food chains: Red meat and game production chains and the abattoir; Fish production chains; Poultry and egg production chains; Dairy production; Molluscan shellfish production chains; Fruit and vegetable production chains.