Added value at the European level

The impact in Europe of PathogenCombat with 17 SMEs, 3 industrial Partners and 24 research Partners, from 17 countries is bound to be very significant.

 

At present the awareness of food safety varies significantly between European countries including present and new Member States. This is the case for all major stakeholders i.e. the consumer, the regulatory and public control agencies, the industry and scientists, and could be linked to the fact that food safety is managed very differently in the different countries. According to the most recent Community Report (SANCO/56/2003) most countries still limit control activities to the end product and do not consider the complete chain e.g. the role of animal feed for introducing pathogens. Some countries rely upon very extensive microbiological laboratory testing programmes, other use the GMP and HACCP systems along the food chain and conduct very few microbiological analyses. Some combine the two approaches and others do very little altogether. The uniformity, which should exist, e.g. based upon the EU regulatory requirements of self-control based upon the HACCP principles, appears to be non-existent. It is difficult to find two countries comparable in their efforts to control foodborne disease of microbial origin, not only in Europe but on a global basis.

PathogenCombat will contribute strongly to improve the effectiveness and uniformity in reducing the prevalence of foodborne pathogens in European food. This will apply at all levels including standardisation of methods of control as well as methods and principles for microbiological analyses.

 

 

Contributions to standards

 

PathogenCombat will contribute to build a strong European standard of Food Safety Management. It will be based upon the information provided on new and emerging pathogens concerning their establishment and virulence and methods of control. This system which should be made uniform in Europe should rely upon elements from ISO 9000:2000 and international standards for GMP and HACCP. Development of the system should be accompanied with a European approved organisation for system certification. The new ISO 22000 Standards: Food Safety Management Systems – Requirements for Organisations throughout the Food Chain, which is being developed, will also be used as a template for the PathogenCombat system.

Another area of standardisation concerns the replacement of the regime of widely used but rather ineffective conventional microbiological analysis by analyses based upon PathogenCombat deliverables. Such new analytical methods are considered a main deliverable. Therefore their validation based upon internationally accepted procedures and their description according to quality standard for laboratories such as ISO 17025 is included in PathogenCombat. Standard like Microbiological Criteria (Codex Alimentarius, 1996) and Food Safety Objectives will be addressed as well.