This work will support risk managers in taking further measures to tackle Salmonella, which infects hundreds of thousands of people each year in the EU mainly due to contaminated food including pig meat.

The core outsourced work will consist of a Quantitative Microbiological Risk Assessment (QMRA), which should provide a quantitative estimate of the existing risk factors and likely effects of proposed measures to reduce them. Analyses will include an assessment of the sources of infection for slaughter pigs at farm level; the impact of slaughter processes on contamination of pig carcasses; and the expected effect of reducing Salmonella in slaughter pigs on Salmonella prevalence in pig meat and Salmonella food poisoning cases in people.

This will be the first time a number of European institutes pool their resources and expertise to feed into an EU level assessment funded and led by EFSA. It follows up EFSA’s strategy on cooperation and networking with Member States endorsed in December 2006, and will bring into play the list of organisations able to assist EFSA, drawn up in December on the basis of national nominations. EFSA has launched a call for applications from consortia of organisations on this list with a deadline of 11 June 2007. Applications will be assessed by EFSA and the successful consortium will receive a grant from EFSA suitable for the nature of the task. More information is available at: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/about_efsa/cooperation/call_for_proposal/cfp_biohaz.html.

For more information on Salmonellosis, click here.