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 have settled for the European Union the One Health WGS system to collect and compare it for E.coli, Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella,
• Other initiatives like GenomeTrkr in also in place in the USA,
• Efficient Implementations are possible in EU: Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands and also in Norway.

The final moderated discussion focused on the "Opportunities and obstacles in sharing genomic data for tackling foodborne threats".

You can now access to the presentations: https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/events/science-meets-policy-conference-using-next-generation-sequencing-tackle-foodborne-threats - the replay of the event will be soon available.