According to Regulation (EU) 2017/625 (Article 101), the National Reference Laboratories shall, where appropriate, organise inter-laboratory comparative testing or Proficiency Tests between official laboratories. That is why the inter-EURL Biorisks Working Group on NGS organised a webinar on 29 September dedicated to "Proficiency Tests on Next Generation Sequencing: approaches in use at the European Union Reference Laboratories". This event, organised by the Inter EURLs WG on NGS, aimed at presenting the approaches used by EURLs: AMR, Campylobacter, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella and VTEC for Proficiency Tests on NGS, to share experiences learnt and serve as guidelines for the organisation of Proficiency Tests on NGS at the Member State level. Presentations are now available on the website of EURL E. coli -> Here

We are pleased to inform you that the revision of EURL Lm Technical Guidance Document on sampling the food processing area and equipment for the detection of Listeria monocytogenes (Version 4 – 3 October 2023) has been adopted by EC Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (PAFF Committee) at its meeting of same day. The new version is available at the end of EURL Lm homepage: “Guidance documents”. This update includes new features adding the presentation of important concepts, such as persistence, biofilm or VBNC, and new guidance for practical implementation (link to data sheets and video tutorials). We would like to thank once more the representatives of 23 members from 12 EU Member States (MSs), belonging to NRLs Lm and other organisations which have collaborated with Graziella MIDELET, Léna BARRE, Adrien ASSÉRÉ, Bertrand LOMBARD and Thomas BRAUGE to draft this document.  

Objective: to evaluate the conformity of the results obtained by the participating laboratories for the detection of Paenibacillus larvae / Melissococcus plutonius, agents of American/European foulbrood. Methods evaluated: Microscopy Conventional and/or real time PCR Culture Matrix: Crushed bee larvae Provisional agenda: Registration deadline: 20/08/2023 Availability of samples to be tested:  September 2023 Requirements for participation: NRLs and official laboratories from EU Member States. NRLs from third countries (depending on the feasibility). Please contact the EU RL for more information.   Note: We inform you that registration is now possible using the online platform LEILA (Reference of the ILPT: PLMP23EU)

The discovery of unexpected, emerging contaminants and their by-products and metabolites or newly produced pesticides through suspected and non-targeted approaches is gaining more and more attention and open new horizons in many fields such as food safety, ecotoxicology, environment, health… Nevertheless, the process of moving from annotation to identification can be time-consuming, complex and fraught. The prediction of liquid chromatographic retention times (RT) by different approaches can be an useful and operational way to efficiently discriminate and select between several molecular formulas and between several molecular structures. The development of quantitative structure-retention relationship (QSRR) models, which are types of models allowing to establish a link between a chemical structure and a property, here the chromatographic retention time, requires an adequate selection of molecular descriptors necessarily obtained based on a chemical structure known. This requires also a selection of the best machine learning/IA algorithm and its optimization. Here we will present different strategies for the selection of descriptors, different types of machine learning/IA algorithms according to the different situations we are confronted with. These strategies may vary depending on the level of information/annotation we have. We will conclude by proposing a methodology based in part on QSRR to improve and secure the annotation process as it has been published by Schymanski and colleagues in 2014. We published this article in relation with this presentation: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.talanta.2023.125214

EURL-CPS announces that the Proficiency Trial - 2023 dedicated to the enumeration of CPS is completely cancelled.

Last week, EFSA & inter-Biorisks EURLs working group on NGS organised the 2nd “Science Meets Policy” conference on “Using Next Generation Sequencing to tackle foodborne threats” in EFSA (Parma, Italy) & online. We had the chance to chair the session dedicated to "Effort on interoperability and the development of new standards". The outcome shows that: Protocols to get NGS typing data have been dispatched by EURLs, EFSA and ECDC have settled for the European Union the One Health WGS system to collect and compare it for E.coli, Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella, Other initiatives like GenomeTrkr in also in place in the USA, Efficient Implementations are possible in EU: Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands and also in Norway. The final moderated discussion focused on the "Opportunities and obstacles in sharing genomic data for tackling foodborne threats". You can now access to the presentations: https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/events/science-meets-policy-conference-using-next-generation-sequencing-tackle-foodborne-threats - the replay of the event will be soon available.  

The video on the assessment of the state of consciousness after waterbath stunning in turkeys can be found on the website page "Stunning" or directly here.

The Inter European Union Reference Laboratories (EURLs) Working Group on Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) published a work illustrating the results of the first 5 years of activity. By working together, the EURLs involved have released guidance documents for assisting NRLs in all the steps of NGS, helping the transition from classical molecular methods towards whole genome sequencing while ensuring harmonization, with the final aim of improving preparedness in the use of NGS to characterize microbial hazards and trace the sources of infection. The article is available here 

From 26 to 29 June 2023, the eleven European Symposium on Poultry Welfare took place in Prague (Czech Republic). Seven members of the EURCAW-Poultry-SFA participated and two members had an oral communication based on results arising from the Centre’s work. EURCAW-Poultry-SFA members (from the left to the right: A.Contreras, F.Mocz, A.B.Riber, V.Michel, K.E.Wurtz., A.Velarde)   Session 4 – Bone quality, 27.06.23, proceeding p46 Effect of environmental enrichments on leg health and behaviour of fast-growing broiler chick-ens reared at two different stocking densities. Frédérique Mocz, Virginie Michel, Mathilde Janvrot, Jean-Philippe Moysan, Alassane Keita, Anja B. Riber, Maryse Guinebretière Keywords: broiler, enrichment, footpad dermatitis, hock burn, stocking density   F. Mocz Session 8 – Open session, 28.06.23, proceeding p81 Alternative gas mixtures to carbon dioxide in two phases in broiler chickens. Alexandra Contreras-Jodar, Daniel Santiago Rucinque, Troy John Gibson, Virginie Michel, Antonio Velarde Keywords: broiler chickens, gas stunning, slaughter, aversion, welfare   A. Contreras   More information is available on the event website: https://www.espw2023.org/      

On 20 June, the 3 EURCAWs hosted the Common EURCAW meeting for the National Reference Centres (NRCs) & Supporting Bodies (SBs). At the start of the meeting, the EURCAWs presented highlights of their current activities. The next session introduced two relatively new NRCs for Animal Welfare – Spain (established in March 2023) and Slovenia (established in January 2022).  The National Centre Group for Animal Welfare (NCGAW) then led an interactive session. The NCGAW currently comprises six NRCs for Animal Welfare: France (coordinator), Finland, Greece, Italy, Sweden, and Spain. The final session of the meeting considered, ‘Ways to Collaborate’ where the EURCAWs presented priority topics that they would welcome collaboration from the NRCs and SBs. In total 42 participants from 15 Member States participated, including 14 members from the three EURCAWs.   The report is available here.  The slides from this meeting are available here.