A farm transmission model for Salmonella in pigs, applicable to EU members states

The burden of Salmonella entering pig slaughterhouses across the European Union (EU) is considered a primary food safety concern. In order to assist EU Member States with the development of National Control Plans, we have developed a farm transmission model applicable to all Member States. It is an individual-based stochastic Susceptible-Infected model, that takes into account four different sources of infection of pigs (sows, feed, external contaminants such as rodents and new stock) and various management practices linked to Salmonella transmission/protection (housing, flooring, feed, All-In-All-Out production). A novel development within the model is the assessment of dynamic shedding rates. The results of the model, parameterized for two case study Member States (one high and one low prevalence) suggest that breeding herd prevalence is a strong indicator of slaughter pig prevalence. Until a Member States’ breeding herd prevalence is brought below 10% then the sow will be the dominant source of infection to pigs raised for meat production; below this level of breeding herd prevalence, feed becomes the dominant force of infection

Modelling preparation and consumption of pork products

This poster describes the retail and consumer phase of the EFSA Salmonella in Pork Quantitative Microbiological Risk Assessment (QMRA), which was funded under an Article 36 grant to support the scientific opinion required by the EC from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and andopted by the BIOHAZ panel

The risk of infection by African swine fever virus in European swine through boar movement and legal trade of pigs and pig meat

African swine fever (ASF) is currently spreading westwards throughout Europe and eastwards into China, with cases occurring in both wild boar and domestic pigs. A generic risk assessment framework is used to determine the probability of first infection with ASF virus (ASFV) at a fine spatial scale across European Union Member States. The framework aims to assist risk managers across Europe with their ASF surveillance and intervention activities. Performing the risk assessment at a fine spatial scale allows for hot-spot surveillance, which can aid risk managers by directing surveillance or intervention resources at those areas or pathways deemed most at risk, and hence enables prioritization of limited resources. We use 2018 cases of ASF to estimate prevalence of the disease in both wild boar and pig populations and compute the risk of initial infection for 2019 at a 100 km2 cell resolution via three potential pathways: legal trade in live pigs, natural movement of wild boar, and legal trade in pig meat products. We consider the number of pigs, boar and amount of pig meat entering our area of interest, the prevalence of the disease in the origin country, the probability of exposure of susceptible pigs or boar in the area of interest to introduced infected pigs, boar, or meat from an infected pig, and the probability of transmission to susceptible animals. We provide maps across Europe indicating regions at highest risk of initial infection. Results indicate that the risk of ASF in 2019 was predominantly focused on those regions which already had numerous cases in 2018 (Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, and Latvia). The riskiest pathway for ASFV transmission to pigs was the movement of wild boar for Eastern European countries and legal trade of pigs for Western European countries. New infections are more likely to occur in wild boar rather than pigs, for both the pig meat and wild boar movement pathways. Our results provide an opportunity to focus surveillance activities and thus increase our ability to detect ASF introductions earlier, a necessary requirement if we are to successfully control the spread of this devastating disease for the pig industry

Characterization of the Human Risk of Salmonellosis Related to Consumption of Pork Products in Different E.U. Countries Based on a QMRA

In response to the European Food Safety Authority's wish to assess the reduction of human cases of salmonellosis by implementing control measures at different points in the farm-to-consumption chain for pork products, a quantitative microbiological risk assessment (QMRA) was developed. The model simulated the occurrence of Salmonella from the farm to consumption of pork cuts, minced meat, and fermented ready-to-eat sausage, respectively, and a dose-response model was used to estimate the probability of illness at consumption. The QMRA has a generic structure with a defined set of variables, whose values are changed according to the E.U. member state (MS) of interest. In this article we demonstrate the use of the QMRA in four MSs, representing different types of countries. The predicted probability of illness from the QMRA was between 1 in 100,000 and 1 in 10 million per serving across all three product types. Fermented ready-to-eat sausage imposed the highest probability of illness per serving in all countries, whereas the risks per serving of minced meat and pork chops were similar within each MS. For each of the products, the risk varied by a factor of 100 between the four MSs. The influence of lack of information for different variables was assessed by rerunning the model with alternative, more extreme, values. Out of the large number of uncertain variables, only a few of them have a strong influence on the probability of illness, in particular those describing the preparation at home and consumption

Assessing the effect of on-farm and abattoir interventions in reducing human salmonellosis from pig meat consumption in the EU

Pigs are commonly infected with Salmonella spp. at the slaughterhouse, and the consumption of pig meat is hypothesised to be an important contributor to human salmonellosis. The European Union (EU) will shortly set targets for the reduction of Salmonella in pigs at slaughter for each Member State (MS), and each MS is expected to put in place a National Control Plan (NCP) in order to achieve their targets. If MSs are to realise their targets then practical interventions that consistently work must be identified

A generic framework for spatial quantitative risk assessments of infectious diseases : lumpy skin disease case study

The increase in availability of spatial data and the technological advances to handle such data allow for subsequent improvements in our ability to assess risk in a spatial setting. We provide a generic framework for quantitative risk assessments of disease introduction that capitalises on these new data. It can be adopted across multiple spatial scales, for any pathogen, method of transmission or location. The framework incorporates the risk of initial infection in a previously uninfected location due to registered movement (e.g. trade) and unregistered movement (e.g. daily movements of wild animals). We discuss the steps of the framework and the data required to compute it. We then outline how this framework is applied for a single pathway using lumpy skin disease as a case study, a disease which had an outbreak in the Balkans in 2016. We calculate the risk of initial infection for the rest of Europe in 2016 due to trade. We perform the risk assessment on 3 spatial scales – countries, regions within countries, and individual farms. We find that Croatia (assuming no vaccination occurred) has the highest mean probability of infection, with Italy, Hungary and Spain following. Including import detection of infected trade does reduce risk but this reduction is proportionally lower for countries with highest risk. The risk assessment results are consistent across the spatial scales, while in addition, at the finer spatial scales, it highlights specific areas or individual locations of countries on which to focus surveillance

Assessing the effectiveness of on-farm and abattoir interventions in reducing pig-meat borne Salmonellosis within EU member states

As part of the evidence base for the development of National Control Plans for Salmonella spp. in pigs for EU Member States, a Quantitative Microbiological Risk Assessment was funded to support the scientific opinion required by the EC from the European Food Safety Authority. The main aim of the risk assessment was to assess the effectiveness of interventions implemented on-farm and at the abattoir in reducing human cases of pig meat borne salmonellosis, and how the effects of these interventions may vary across EU Member States. Two case study Member States have been chosen to assess the effect of the interventions investigated. Reducing both breeding herd and slaughter pig prevalence were effective in achieving reductions in the number of expected human illnesses in both case study Member States. However, there is scarce evidence to suggest which specific on-farm interventions could achieve consistent reductions in either breeding herd or slaughter pig prevalence. Hypothetical reductions in feed contamination rates were important in reducing slaughter pig prevalence for the case study Member State where prevalence of infection was already low, but not for the high-prevalence case study. The most significant reductions were achieved by a 1- or 2-log decrease of Salmonella contamination of the carcass post- evisceration; a 1-log decrease in average contamination produced a 90% reduction in human illness. The intervention analyses suggest that abattoir intervention may be the most effective way to reduce human exposure to Salmonella spp. However, a combined farm/abattoir approach would likely have cumulative benefits. On-farm intervention is probably most effective at the breeding herd level for high-prevalence Member States; once infection in the breeding herd has been reduced to a low enough level, then feed and biosecurity measures would become increasingly more effective

Cross-validation of generic risk assessment tools for animal disease incursion based on a case study for African swine fever

In recent years, several generic risk assessment (RA) tools have been developed that can be applied to assess the incursion risk of multiple infectious animal diseases allowing for a rapid response to a variety of newly emerging or re-emerging diseases. Although these tools were originally developed for different purposes, they can be used to answer similar or even identical risk questions. To explore the opportunities for cross-validation, seven generic RA tools were used to assess the incursion risk of African swine fever (ASF) to the Netherlands and Finland for the 2017 situation and for two hypothetical scenarios in which ASF cases were reported in wild boar and/or domestic pigs in Germany. The generic tools ranged from qualitative risk assessment tools to stochastic spatial risk models but were all parameterized using the same global databases for disease occurrence and trade in live animals and animal products. A comparison of absolute results was not possible, because output parameters represented different endpoints, varied from qualitative probability levels to quantitative numbers, and were expressed in different units. Therefore, relative risks across countries and scenarios were calculated for each tool, for the three pathways most in common (trade in live animals, trade in animal products, and wild boar movements) and compared. For the 2017 situation, all tools evaluated the risk to the Netherlands to be higher than Finland for the live animal trade pathway, the risk to Finland the same or higher as the Netherlands for the wild boar pathway, while the tools were inconclusive on the animal products pathway. All tools agreed that the hypothetical presence of ASF in Germany increased the risk to the Netherlands, but not to Finland. The ultimate aim of generic RA tools is to provide risk-based evidence to support risk managers in making informed decisions to mitigate the incursion risk of infectious animal diseases. The case study illustrated that conclusions on the ASF risk were similar across the generic RA tools, despite differences observed in calculated risks. Hence, it was concluded that the cross-validation contributed to the credibility of their results.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio