Control and prevention of emerging and future pathogens at cellular and molecular level throughout the food chain (PATHOGENCOMBAT)

Project website

Food safety is of fundamental importance to the European consumer, food industry and economy. The impact on trade and competitiveness is very substantial. Despite significant investment the incidence of food derived disease still increases in the EU. PathogenCombat attacks this pan-European problem through a holistic, multidisciplinary approach towards threats from new/emerging pathogens in the entire food chain. A number of advanced platforms will be developed to investigate the survival and virulence expression of pathogens in feed and food, and on contact surfaces in the food chain including the intestinal tract of farm animals. The platforms, of which several are used for the first time in food safety studies, comprise bioimaging, laser tweezers, phage display/convergent evolution, functional mammalian cell models, functional genomics and microarrays. New/emerging food borne bacteria, yeast, filamentous fungi and viruses are targeted for milk and dairy products, poultry and pigs and their meat products.