Accidental and deliberate microbiological contamination in the feed and food chains--how biotraceability may improve the response to bioterrorism

Abstract

A next frontier of the global food safety agenda has to consider a broad spectrum of bio-risks, such as accidental and intentional contaminations in the food and feed chain. In this article, the background for the research needs related to biotraceability and response to bioterrorism incidents are outlined. Given the current scale of international trade any response need to be considered in an international context. Biotraceability (e.g. the ability to use downstream information to point to processes or within a particular food chain that can be identified as the source of undesirable agents) is crucial in any food-born outbreak and particular in the response to bioterrorism events. In the later case, tested and proven biotraceability improves the following: (i) international collaboration of validated tracing tools and detection methods, (ii) multi-disciplinary expertise and collaboration in the field of food microbiology and conceptual modeling of the food chain, (iii) sampling as a key step in biotracing (iv) optimized sample preparation procedures, including laboratory work in Biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) laboratories, (v) biomarker discovery for relevant tracing and tracking applications, and (vi) high-throughput sequencing using bio-informatic platforms to speed up the characterization of the biological agent. By applying biotraceability, the response phase during a bioterrorism event may be shortened and is facilitated for tracing the origin of biological agent contamination.