New strategy to tackle the food poisoning bug campylobacter 22 Jul 2010

The UK’s main public funders of food safety research have joined together to publish a co-ordinated strategy to investigate the food bug campylobacter which is responsible for more than 300,000 cases of food poisoning and 15,000 hospitalisations a year in England and Wales. The Food Standards Agency, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Northern Ireland Department for Agriculture and Rural Development and the Scottish Government have all agreed to support the strategy. The Agency, BBSRC, Defra and the Scottish Government are also all partners in the recently launched, multi-agency Global Food Security programme, in which research underpinning the provision of safe food has been identified as a priority.

The new strategy includes:

  • research to understand current infection incidences, current food and farming practices and potential intervention strategies
  • studies of the biology of campylobacter and the animal hosts
  • the development of new tools and diagnostic techniques (for example, feasibility of developing a rapid on-farm test for campylobacter)

View IFST Advisory Statements on Food Safety

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