PathogenCombat

Food safety is of fundamental importance to the European consumer, the food industry and the economy. The impact on trade and competitiveness is very substantial. Despite significant investment, the incidence of food derived disease still increases in the EU. PathogenCombat attacks this pan-European problem through a holistic, multidisciplinary approach towards threats from new/emerging pathogens in the entire food chain.

 

A number of advanced platforms will be developed to investigate the survival and virulence expression of pathogens in feed and food, and on contact surfaces in the food chain including the intestinal tract of farm animals. The platforms, of which several are used for the first time in food safety studies, comprise bioimaging, laser tweezers, phage display/convergent evolution, functional mammalian cell models, functional genomics and microarrays. New/emerging foodborne bacteria, yeast, filamentous fungi and viruses are targeted for milk and dairy products, ruminants, poultry and pigs and their meat products.

 

The overall (1) and specific objectives (2-11) of PathogenCombat can briefly be described as follows:

 

1. Production of safe food with none or acceptably low levels of pathogens

 

2. Determination of factors in the food chain, which enable the viability, persistence and virulence of pathogens

 

3. Detection and prediction of the occurrence and virulence of pathogens in the food chain with molecular biology based culture independent techniques and microarrays

 

4. Determination of host-pathogen interaction with functional cell model replacing the use of experimental animals

 

5. Prevention of pathogen transmission along the food chain by new processing technologies and systems, protective cultures and new information on host-pathogen interaction

6. Application in the food chain/SMEs of PathogenCombat deliverables

 

7. Pathogen control throughout the food chain by new mathematical models

 

8. Food Safety Management System, which incorporates the deliverables of PathogenCombat

 

9.  SME Network including dissemination of knowledge and dissemination of results

 

10. Training of SMEs

 

11. Consumer awareness of food safety

 

 

PathogenCombat is an integrated project under the EU 6th Framework Programme. The project started 1st of April 2005 and will run til April 2010.

 

Abreviations:
SME Small and medium size enterprises
RTD Research, technology and development
NTC Network, training and consumer
FP6 Framework Programme 6