Salmonella and Campylobacter are the most important bacterial causes of foodborne illness in Europe. To identify and prioritize food safety interventions, it is important to quantify the burden of human foodborne illness attributable to specific sources. Data from outbreak investigations are observed at the public health endpoint and can therefore be a direct measure of attribution at the point of exposure. An analysis or summary of outbreak investigations is useful for attributing illnesses to foods, but often the implicated foods in reported outbreaks are complex foods, containing several food items, many of which could be the specific source of the infection. We describe a method that is able to attribute human cases to specific food items contained in complex foods. The model is based on data from investigations of Salmonella and Campylobacter outbreaks in the European Union in 2005 and 2006. The reporting of the causative vehicles for the outbreaks was not harmonized between and within countries. Consequently, we organized the implicated foods in mutually exclusive food categories. We estimated that the most important food sources for salmonellosis cases were eggs (32%) and meat and poultry-meat (15%), and that the majority of the cases of campylobacteriosis were attributed to chicken (10%). For both pathogens, a large proportion of cases could not be linked to any source. Among illnesses that could be attributed to a source, 58% of salmonellosis cases were attributed to eggs, and 29% of campylobacteriosis cases were attributed to chicken. Results also revealed regional differences in the relative importance of specific sources. We assessed the method to be of limited value to attribute human campylobacteriosis due to the limited number of outbreaks. Nevertheless, the presented source attribution approach can be applied to other foodborne pathogens, and is easily adaptable to countries having an appropriate number of reported outbreaks.

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The 2006 annual Community Summary Report from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) was released this week with the latest trends and figures on the occurrence of zoonotic infections and agents, antimicrobial resistance and food-borne outbreaks in the then 25 European Union Member States and five non-EU countries (Bulgaria, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Romania).

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Technical specifications are proposed for harmonised monitoring and reporting of verotoxigenic Escherichia coli (VTEC) in animals and foodstuffs by the European Union Member States in accordance with the Directive 2003/99/EC (EC, 2003).This harmonisation should facilitate a better analysis of the situation at Member State and Community levels and enable cost‐effective monitoring. According to a risk‐based sampling strategy, the technical specifications describe an entire survey, aiming at estimating at slaughter the prevalence of VTEC O157 contamination, primarily on the hide of young cattle and secondarily on sheep fleeces. It is proposed that all Member States carry out monitoring on a minimum three‐year interval basis. In addition to the monitoring of VTEC O157, which is the most often reported serogroup in VTEC cases in humans in the European Union, Member States may extend the monitoring to the serogroups: VTEC O26, O103, O111 and O145, which are also identified as causes of human infections. Regarding foodstuffs, general guidelines are given for carrying out specific surveys on the food categories that are most likely to be sources of VTEC O157 and non‐O157 infections in humans. The standardised ISO 16654:2001 (ISO, 2001) method is recommended for the detection of E. coli O157 in food. A method derived from the same ISO is specifically proposed for the testing of hide and fleece samples. All isolated E. coli O157 strains must be confirmed as VTEC by testing for the presence of VT‐encoding genes (vtx). Regarding the detection of serogroups O26, O103, O111 and O145, the draft CEN TC275/WG6 standard, currently submitted to ISO for evaluation, is proposed to be used. Specifications are also given for the reporting of the information on the VTEC monitoring programme and its results in animals and foodstuffs by Member States in their annual zoonoses reports.

In this report, harmonised epidemiological indicators are proposed for foodborne biological hazards to public health that are related to farmed game and meat thereof and that can be addressed within meat inspection. These hazards include Salmonella, Toxoplasma, Trichinella and Mycobacterium in farmed wild boar and deer. An epidemiological indicator is defined as the prevalence or concentration of the hazard at a certain stage of the food chain or an indirect measure of the hazard that correlates to the human health risk caused by the hazard. The indicators can be used by the European Commission and Member States to consider when adaptations in meat inspection methods may be relevant and to carry out risk analysis to support such decisions. It is foreseen that the indicators will be used in the revised meat inspection system for farmed game meat outlined in the European Food Safety Authority scientific opinion, particularly to help categorise slaughter batches, animals and slaughterhouses according to the risk related to the hazards and process hygiene or to enable surveillance for the possible emergence of the hazard. Depending on the purpose and the epidemiological situation, risk managers should decide on the most appropriate indicator(s) to use, either alone or in combination, at national, regional, slaughterhouse or farm/herd level. Member States are invited to report data generated by the implementation of the indicators in accordance with Directive 2003/99/EC. The proposed indicators should be regularly reviewed in light of new information and the data generated by their implementation.