European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has jointly published a Rapid Outbreak Assessment on a persistant ST155 Listeria monocytogenes strain in ready-to-eat fish products likely the cause of 64 infections and 10 deaths in EU/EEA and UK since 2016. ⇒ EFSA news: link

It is with great sadness that we were informed of the death of our colleague Brigitte Carpentier-Cerf on October 6, 2023.  She was a great scientist in food microbiology, internationally recognised for her work on the microbial persistence of pathogenic bacteria and biofilms in agro-food environments. Brigitte had worked at Anses for over thirty years and had been involved in EURL Lm activities from the outset, where she had led the work of the  working group in charge of the...

According to Regulation (EU) 2017/625 (Article 101), the National Reference Laboratories shall, where appropriate, organise inter-laboratory comparative testing or Proficiency Tests between official laboratories. That is why the inter-EURL Biorisks Working Group on NGS organised a webinar on 29 September dedicated to "Proficiency Tests on Next Generation Sequencing: approaches in use at the European Union Reference Laboratories". This event, organised by the Inter EURLs WG on...

We are pleased to inform you that the revision of EURL Lm Technical Guidance Document on sampling the food processing area and equipment for the detection of Listeria monocytogenes (Version 4 – 3 October 2023) has been adopted by EC Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (PAFF Committee) at its meeting of same day. The new version is available at the end of EURL Lm homepage: “Guidance documents”. This update includes new features adding the presentation of...

Last week, EFSA & inter-Biorisks EURLs working group on NGS organised the 2nd “Science Meets Policy” conference on “Using Next Generation Sequencing to tackle foodborne threats” in EFSA (Parma, Italy) & online. We had the chance to chair the session dedicated to "Effort on interoperability and the development of new standards". The outcome shows that: Protocols to get NGS typing data have been dispatched by EURLs, EFSA and ECDC...

The EURL for Listeria monocytogenes  (Lm) together with the Italian, the Hungarian NRLs and the Dutch associated NRL have developed a PCR test for the rapid and inexpensive (10€ reagent cost) identification of 30 Lm strains Multi locus sequence typing clonal complexes (CC). It has already been used in Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Hungary to investigate the origin of human cases of listeriosis.  The project was conducted by a working group of 11 NRLs (BE, CH, CY, DE, IT,...

In order to assist Food Business Operators (FBOs) producing RTE foods to comply with (EC) Regulation No 2073/2005, former DG SANCO developed and made available in 2008 a Guidance Document on Lm shelf-life studies for RTE foods, designated as “draft”. This document may also be used by Competent Authorities to verify the correct implementation of shelf-life studies by FBOs. Since then, Regulation 2073/2005 has been modified, a new standard on challenge test has been published (EN ISO...

EFSA with the inter-EURL working group on Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) is organising the “Science Meets Policy” conference on “EU initiatives towards the large-scale use of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) to tackle foodborne threats” (online and in Parma) to be held on 5-6 September 2023. The meeting is open to all interested parties and it will be particularly relevant for food safety risk assessment competent authorities in the EU and beyond, as well as...

We are pleased to inform you that the revision of EURL Lm Guidance document on the competence of laboratories implementing shelf-life studies (Version 3 – 10 February 2023) has been adopted by EC Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (PAFF Committee) at its meeting of 10 February 2023. This version is available on the DG SANTE website: link. You will be able to find also this link at the end of EURL Lm homepage: “Guidance documents”. This is the end of a...

The new year started with changes for the Estonian NRL for Listeria monocytogenes. As of 1 January 2023, the Veterinary and Food Laboratory bears a new name – Riigi Laboriuuringute ja Riskihindamise Keskus (LABRIS) or in English the National Centre for Laboratory Research and Risk Assessment. Because of the change, all e-mail addresses have changed (firstname.surname@labris.agri.ee). The address of homepage has also changed to www.labris.ee. At the same time, the old website address...