The European Commission has proposed legislation requiring EU countries to do whole genome sequencing (WGS) during foodborne outbreaks. Officials said the plans would facilitate investigations into outbreaks and the timely detection of the source, which would limit the number of people sick and food recalls and withdrawals. Member states would be required to collect Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, E.
coli, Campylobacter jejuni, and Campylobacter coli isolates from food, animal, feed, and related environmental samples from businesses and during official controls, where the isolates are suspected to be associated with a foodborne outbreak. They would also need to carry out WGS on those isolates. EU countries would send the related results to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) that developed the One Health WGS system with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
EFSA would be able to compare the results from WGS on isolates collected as required by the regulation with findings from WGS on human isolates communicated to ECDC. This would allow it to identify the source of an outbreak and affected consignments. Draft open for comment Under current rules, authorities in implicated member states must investigate foodborne outbreaks, but how they do this is not strictly defined.
The aim is to provide data on the epidemiological profile, the foodstuffs potentially implicated, and the potential causes. In 2022, there were 5,763 foodborne outbreaks in the.
