At the beginning of the 2021 another PhD student has been recruited. Thierno Diallo from the Master Analytical Chemistry of the Rouen University has been recruited for Amphibie Ph.D thesis, which is part of AlimOmic. This Ph.D is in collaboration with La Rochelle University. Thierno will work on the development of Quechers/Quppe - LC- HRMS methods in order to detect pesticides, veterinary products and microplastics in oysters and mussels from La Rochelle area in order to explain the high level of mortality of these organisms in this region and also along the Atlantic littoral.

The 'European Listeria Typing Exercise’ (ELiTE) is a collaborative study initiated in 2010 as a multi-sectorial, multi-centre exercise between led by ECDC, in association with EFSA, the EURL Lm, National Public Health Institutes, National Public Health Reference Laboratories, National Food Safety Authorities, food National Reference Laboratories for L. monocytogenes and involving indirectly, local and regional public health and food safety authorities. This study enabled the molecular characterisation of the strains isolated from either human cases or food during the baseline survey conducted over 2010 and 2011 by EFSA and DG SANTE. 3 categories of ready-to-eat food had been sampled: packaged hot or cold smoked or ‘gravad’ (cured) fish, soft or semi-soft cheeses, and packaged heat-treated meat products. In the frame of this study, EURL Lm  had in particular characterised the food strains for several EU Member States, had collected the characterisation and associated data of all the strains from food origin, and had curated their PFGE profiles. Strain typing was performed by PFGE and a correspondence with MSLT clonal complexes was implemented. It was the 1st time that simultaneous characterisation of strains from human and food was conducted at European level to investigate possible combined clusters (human/food). We invite you to read the "ECDC news story" and the joint report.

  For more information : https://promedmail.org/promed-post/?id=8247240

Please, find the recent publications here : https://sitesv2.anses.fr/en/minisite/lrue-fievre-aphteuse/publications

We would like to share with you this article* written jointly with the Polish NRL (National Institute of Hygiene, Warsaw) about a molecular investigation of the contamination of vegetables by Listeria monocytogenes. The EURL Lm provided a support for PFGE and Genomic analysis. For PFGE, the EURL Lm provided a support for profile harmonisation and comparison with a substantial contribution to the article text and figures. For Genomic Analysis the EURL Lm performed the quality validation of the raw sequencing data and genomes assembly using his in house pipeline genomic pipeline ARTwork and performed cgMLST annotation using the ANSES calculation engine. The genomic analysis text and figures was written by the EURL Lm.

Please, find the recent publications here : https://sitesv2.anses.fr/en/minisite/lrue-fievre-aphteuse/publications

Our colleagues from the Czech Veterinary Reseach Institute published an article in Frontiers in Microbiology entitled Comparative Analysis of Genetic Determinants Encoding Cadmium, Arsenic, and Benzalkonium Chloride Resistance in Listeria monocytogenes of Human, Food, and Environmental Origin

On December 10th, EU Reference Laboratory for Brucellosis (Animal health Institute – ANSES) organised its 13th annual Workshop. Thirty-three countries joined the meeting, with total number of 66 participants. The topics of the day mainly were serological analyses, which also included an intra-laboratory trial to evaluate the serological techniques (on sera) and comparison of different ELISA kits for diagnostics of Brucella spp. in pigs (suidaes). The meeting included three external (keynote) presentations, addressing the original cases recently described: 1) Evolution of ovine contagious epididymitis in Aragon province (Clara Marin, CITA, Spain); 2) The case of the cow super spreader of vaccinal strain RB51, and link to the human contamination in the USA since 2017 (Rebekah Tiller, CDC, USA); 3) Presentation of the human case of infection with Brucella inopinata in France (Anne Kériel, CNR Brucella, France). Our big thanks to Marie-France Devaux who took care of all administrative work and logistics, as well as Lisa Laboutière, Ludivine Perrot, Fathia Petot-Bottin et Maëline Ribeiro (technical experts in the Brucella team), who contribute daily to the realisation of the scientific and technical program alongside the scientists (Vitomir Djokic, Acacia Ferreira Vicente, Luca Freddi, Guillaume Girault and Claire Ponsart).

The Inter-European Union Reference Laboratories (EURLs) Working Group (WG) has been established by the European Commission with the aim to promote the use of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) across the EURLs' networks, build NGS capacity within the EU European union  and ensure liaison with the work of the EURLs and the work of EFSA and ECDC on the NGS mandate sent by the Commission. The WG includes all the EURLs operating in the field of the microbiological contamination of food and feed and is coordinated by the EURL European Union Reference Laboratory for E. coli.   The documents are meant to provide guidance to the laboratories in the area of application of NGS and have been produced by the working group with the aim of being diffused to all the networks of NRLs National Reference Laboratories.   Links to these documents at the respective curators' websites will be added below as soon as the documents become available: Overview of conducted and planned PTs – curated by EURL-Antimicrobial Resistance Reference Whole Genome Sequencing collection  – curated by EURL-Salmonella NGS laboratory procedures – curated by EURL-Parasites Bioinformatics tools for basic analysis of Next Generation Sequencing data  – curated by EURL-E. coli Guidance document for cluster analysis of whole genome sequence data  – curated by EURL-Campylobacter Guidance document for NGS-Benchmarking  – curated by EURL-Listeria monocytogenes Inventory of training supports – curated by EURL-Coagulase-Positive Staphylococci Survey on the use of NGS across the NRLs networks – curated by EURL-E. coli

The EURL for Bee Health held its 10th annual workshop on 21st and 22nd October 2020 by video conference. This first remote EURL workshop was a success with up to 54 participants connected at the same time. This year, the discussions focused on exotic diseases with presentations on the small hive beetle (SHB) and Tropilaelaps spp. mites, whose a ring test for morphological identification that the EURL organised was presented. Dr. Franco Mutinelli, Head of the Italian NRL, presented a state of play of the occurrence and surveillance of SHB in Southern Italy. Dr. Orlando Yanez presented a subject on international beeswax trade and small hive beetle invasions. The participants had also the pleasure to listen to presentations from two NRL representatives. Dr. Marc Schäfer, head of the German NRL and Dr. Gunita Deksne, representative of the Latvian NRL, gave a talk on their activities and the honey bee health status in their respective countries. We thank all the speakers for their interesting presentations and all the contributors for the fruitful discussions. Practical information and documents for the NRL network can be found here.