Postal address:

 

FRENCH AGENCY FOR FOOD, ENVIRONMENTAL AND OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH & SAFETY

Nancy Laboratory for Rabies and Wildlife

Batiment H

Technopôle Agricole et Vétérinaire

CS 40 009

54220 Malzéville - France

Phone: +33 (0)3 83 29 89 50

 

E-Mail: For any questions or remarks, please contact us by email.

 

EURLs, what for?

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In the context of the EU strategy aimed at improving animal health and establishing the single market for live animals and animal products, a network of European Union and National Reference Laboratories dealing with major animal diseases has been gradually set up. The designation of European Union Reference Laboratories should contribute to a high quality and uniformity of analytical results. EURLs for animal health and zootechnics are listed in Annex VIII of Regulation (EC) No 882/2004 on official controls, a regulation which was recently repealed and replaced by Regulation (EU) 2017/625 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2017, starting 29 April 2018, in order to rationalize and simplify the overall legislative framework, and integrate the rules applicable to official controls in specific areas into a single legislative framework for official controls.

Functions and duties of the EURLs consist notably in providing information on analysis methods and organising comparative tests with the National Reference Laboratories, coordinating the application of the methods and research into new analysis methods, organising training and advanced courses for National Reference Laboratory staff and providing scientific and technical assistance to the Commission.
Apart from these duties and functions the Commission approves an annual or bi-annual working plan for each EURL specifying their tasks for the next year(s).

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Financial aid to EURLs

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Within the framework of Council Decision 90/424/EEC on expenditure in the veterinary field of 26 June 1990, these laboratories may receive European Union financial aid for fulfilling the tasks and functions specified in the animal health legislation. For this reason, the work programmes for the EURLs concerned are approved every year via specific Decisions, based on Council Decision 90/425/EEC. Appropriations shall be decided upon each year as part of the budgetary procedure.
Commission Regulation (EC) No 1754/2006 of 28 November 2006 lays down detailed rules for the granting of European Union financial assistance to European Union Reference Laboratories for feed and food and the animal health sector pursuant to Article 28 of Decision 90/424/EEC. The said Regulation provides that the financial contribution from the European Union is to be granted if the approved work programmes are efficiently carried out and that the beneficiaries supply all the necessary information within certain time limits. In accordance with Article 2 of this Regulation, the relationship between the Commission and each European Union Reference Laboratory is laid down in a partnership agreement which is supported by a multi-annual work programme.

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Eradication and monitoring programmes

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The European Commission has eradication and monitoring programmes for animal diseases (Regulation (EU) N° 652/2014). These national veterinary programmes aim at progressively eliminating animal diseases that are endemic to certain areas of the European Union. They also include checks aimed at preventing zoonoses. The programmes include a wide range of measures including vaccination, testing of animals, compensation for slaughtering or culling and treatment.
Rabies is part of the second group of diseases (“diseases with impact on human health and/or animal health and close to eradication, whenfeasible") covered by the EC programmes.

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Task force for monitoring disease eradication in the Member States

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The Task Force was created in a meeting held on 15 March 2000 in Brussels in accordance with action 29 of the White Paper on Food Safety . The objectives of the Task Force are to improve animal disease eradication as well as improve the cost-benefit ratio of animal disease eradication programmes co-financed by the European Union. Meetings are chaired by the Commission and take place in Brussels each three to six months. For some diseases (sheep and goat brucellosis, bovine brucellosis, bovine tuberculosis, rabies, salmonellosis) subgroups of the Task Force have been established.

The subgroups support the Task Force and the Member States in their attempts to develop and to implement optimal disease eradication measures. The members of the subgroups are personally nominated.
For each meeting of the Subgroups a final report is produced. In those reports, a number of conclusions and recommendations are provided. The Task Force for rabies was created in 2004.

Year	Date	Town	Country
2017	2-4 October	Bucharest	Romania
2015	15-16 October	Budapest	Hungary
2012	11-12 December	Warsaw	Poland
2012	29-30 November	Zagreb	Croatia
2011	28 April	Kaliningrad	Russia
2011	14-15 March	Plovdiv	Bulgaria
2010	8-9 November	Tartu	Estonia
2009	27-28 October	Vilnius	Lithuania
2008	26-27 November	Riga	Latvia
2007	11-12 May	Velky Meder	Slovak Republic
2006	6-7 April	Poznan	Poland
2005	26-27 April	Vilnius	Lithuania
2004	21-22 September	Klagenfurt	Austria

 

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/food/funding/animal-health/national-veterinary-programmes_en (Section "4. Useful information" / "Subgroup" / "Rabies subgroup")

 

Additional documentation

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• European Union Reference Laboratories (Europa website)
• Funding of Animal Health Measures (Europa website)
• Official Control Regulation (EU) 2017/625

The EURL provides scientific and technical assistance to all the National Reference Laboratories (NRLs)

●  Organisation of training sessions on request (in Nancy or in the NRL), with transfer of techniques,

●  Organisation of workshops with interested NRLs on specific topics,

●  Establishment of procedures and guidelines,

●  Providing on-going remote technical assistance (phone meetings, e-mails, biological material supplying on request, etc.).

Organising, coordinating, implementing and monitoring oral fox vaccination campaigns against rabies

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In France, in 1968 following the first vulpine rabies cases in the North-East of country, the front advanced rapidly westwards and southwards. In 1971, nine departments, totalling an area of 25000 km² were infected. The laboratory was built in 1971 in the infected area to conduct rabies diagnosis on suspect and found dead animals.

In the 1970s, the laboratory extensively participated in scientific research work for developing oral vaccine baits to control the disease in fox population.

A number of experimental trials were undertaken to check efficacy and safety of vaccines before their marketing, in collaboration with other international groups involved in rabies activities. In 1986, the laboratory tested the first available methods of oral vaccination with baits (chicken head baits) deposited in the field by manual distribution. From 1990, the overall organisation of the oral vaccination campaigns has been centralised: the Anses-Nancy Laboratory for rabies and wildlife was requested by the national competent authority to organize and plan the oral vaccination of foxes and, in close cooperation with its delegates, to implement and evaluate the programmes.

From 1988 to 1998, year of the last recorded case of vulpine rabies in France, the laboratory planned the strategy and implemented oral vaccination campaigns in infected areas twice a year using helicopters. These campaigns were then prolonged until 2003 along Northern and Eastern borders and were performed once again in 2005.

Several field trials have been conducted to improve the efficiency of oral vaccination programme, particularly to promote cubs' coming into contact with baits and also to counterbalance the increase of the fox population.


 

Rabies surveillance and vaccination monitoring

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Based on the collection of animals found dead, road killed, suspect animals as well as all animals having contamined humans, the national surveillance network is organised as represented below :

• In case of human contamination (bite, scratch), animal cadavers are sent by the veterinary services to the Pasteur Institute.
• In all other cases, they are submitted by the veterinary services to Anses for rabies testing.
   

Rabies surveillance is the key element of rabies control and prevention programmes. It is based on laboratory investigations on samples taken from susceptible suspect animals to collect sufficient spatial and temporal descriptive data used to build the control programme.

The national network for animal rabies surveillance is centralised at Anses-Nancy laboratory for rabies and wildlife. The incidence of rabies in animals is currently assessed throughout all the country by undertaking diagnosis on suspect animals using the OIE and WHO reference tests, i.e. the fluorescent antibody test and the real time RT-PCR  (WHO, 2018; OIE, 2018). The positive cases are systematically investigated by sequencing to characterise the virus strains of isolated lyssaviruses, and also to study the circulating field isolates in the country.

The monitoring of the efficacy of oral vaccination programmes was conducted in vaccinated areas by:..

• Assessing bait uptake by testing the target species (foxes) in vaccinated areas for biomarker (tetracycline) occurrence and assessing age categories of foxes marked by tetracycline.
• Assessing rabies antibodies in target species in vaccinated areas: a cell virus neutralisaion method by using an ELISA previously validated for wildlife sample titration.

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Technical competences in rabies

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The laboratory currently uses the folowing laboratory methods (Table 1):

Table 1
Areas	Methods	Comments
Diagnostic	FAT RTCIT DRIT Conventional RT-PCR SYBR Green RT-PCR TaqMan RT-PCR
Serology	FAVN test Indirect ELISA Competitive ELSA	Used  on  animal  sera  and  animal immunoglobulins
Vaccine potency testing	NIH Pharmacopeia test TSA
Monitoring of vaccination programmes	Biomarker determination Age determination	Both on tooth samples
Virus titration	On cells On animals

 

 

The laboratory is experienced in the development, validation and standardisation of laboratory methods, mainly for diagnosis and serology, and regularly organises international workshops, inter-laboratory studies and proficiency tests.

 

The laboratory is enrolled in quality assurance (Table 2):

Table 2
Standard	Test	Accreditation body
NF EN ISO/IEC 17043	Organization of rabies serological proficiency test	COFRAC (since May 2017)
NF EN ISO/IEC 17025	FAT  (Lyssavirus antigen) and RTCIT (Lyssavirus)	COFRAC (since October 2012)
NF EN ISO/IEC 17025	Molecular Biology (Lysaviruses RNA detection)	COFRAC (since March 2020)
NF EN ISO/IEC 17025	Control of efficacy of live oral vaccines in wildlife	Mutual Joint Audit (EDQM) (since January 2012)
NF EN ISO/IEC 17025	Control of efficacy of inactivated rabies vaccines for veterinary and human use (challenge test and serological test)	Mutual Joint Audit (EDQM) (since March 2008)
NF EN ISO/IEC 17025	Rabies virus seroneutralisation test (FAVN test)	COFRAC (since February 2008)

 

 

The laboratory developped several methods (Table 3):

Table 3
Name of the test developed	Use	References
Straw sampling kit	Simplified technique dor the collection, storage and shipment of brain material from animals for rabies diagnosis	Barrat et al., 1986 - WHO, 1987 - WHO, 1996 -    WHO, 2018
Simplified test for potency testing of inactivated veterinary vaccines	Potency testing of vacines using one dilution of the vaccine	Aubert, 1982 - WHO, 1996 - European Pharmacopeia, 2014
FAVN (Fluorescent Antibody Virus Neutralization) test	Titration of seroneutralising rabies antibodies in human and animals blood samples	Cliquet et al., 1998 - WHO, 2018 - OIE, 2018
Indirect ELISA	Titration of rabies virus antibodies in wildlife samples for vaccination monitoring	Cliquet et al., 2000
Paper-based diagnosis for sample sending through normal postal means	Impregnation of rabies suspect brain tissue to allow safe and cost effective shipment of diagnosis samples	Picard Meyer et al., 2007
Paper-based technology to collect blood samples of wildlife	Impregnation of blood samples to allow simple collection and storage of field samples for further serological testing using ELISA	Wasniewski et al., 2014
Hemi-nested RT-PCR method	Specific determination of EBLV-1 Lyssavirus	Picard-Meyer et al., 2004

 

 

The laboratory is also organising proficiency tests (Table 4):

 

Table 4
Proficiency test	Since	Frequency
Dog and cat rabies serology	2000	Annual since 2009
Rabies diagnosis (FAT, RTCIT, RT-PCR, Real Time RT-PCR)	2002	Annual since 2009 Every two years since 2017
Tetracycline biomarker and age determination	2010	Every two years

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Research activities on rabies

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A the present time, the research work of the laboratory is mainly intended to increase knowledge on the pathogenicity of certain rabies viruses (those that infect European bats), to develop experimental models and to investigate the transmission of bat lyssaviruses to other bats and to non flying animals.

 

 

0 November 2014

FRENCH AGENCY FOR FOOD, ENVIRONMENTAL AND OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH & SAFETY

Nancy Laboratory for Rabies and Wildlife

Batiment H

Technopôle Agricole et Vétérinaire

CS 40 009

54220 Malzéville - France

 

GPS localisation:  48.72635718594794, 6.181035981226453

Anses Nancy - Google Map