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Epizootic diseases in agriculture and aquaculture animals constitute major risks for the food production. Such diseases spread very fast in high densities of susceptible animals through animals, vectors or animal products. Outbreaks in Europe showed enormous social and economic impact, and need to be addressed across the whole production chain of animal-related food. The objective of EPIZONE is to improve research on preparedness, prevention, detection, and control of epizootics by improvement of excellence through collaboration.
EPIZONE will be developed for integration of scientists in health and production of animals, at the European Level. Benefits of EPIZONE primarily concern consumers and stakeholders throughout the food supply chain but also the agriculture administrations and biotechnology companies. EPIZONE includes 14 institutes from 11 countries. Partners maintain networks worldwide, therewith linked to EPIZONE, and most have (inter)national ref-lab based tasks for control of epizootics. The manage ment structure of EPIZONE will generate durable interactions between partners. Initially +300 key scientists with international reputations, complementary expertises and skills are identified within the partners. EPIZONE will generate a worldwide network of institutes contributing to available expertise and spreading of excellence. EPIZONE includes an SME specialised in dissemination of knowledge via Internet. Organisational work packages will develop integration activities, including communications, meetings, and training/continuous professional development. Scientific work packages will undertake jointly executed research on epizootics selected on importance in Europe and cover 4 thematic areas: Diagnostics, Intervention Strategies, Surveillance and Epidemiology, and Risk Assessment. Given the network structure, the technical resources and the scientific excellence, EPIZONE will assure strategically driven state-of-art research of world-renown quality.
<P>For more information about this project, please visit the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/research/biosociety/food_quality/projects/103_en.ht…; target="_blank">European Commission Food Quality and Safety in Europe</a> or the <a href="http://www.epizone-eu.net/" target="_blank">EPIZONE</a> Web sites.