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<UL> <LI> To agree criteria and methods for priority setting of foodborne and zoonotic hazards, including emerging and re-emerging pathogens;
<LI> To collect and evaluate existing data on the incidence, health outcomes and costs of foodborne and zoonotic illness;
<LI> To produce a preliminary estimate of the current disease burden and cost of illness of (selected) foodborne and zoonotic pathogens in Europe;
<LI> To identify the major uncertainties in the data used to produce these disease estimates;
<LI> To recommend additional studies and to prepare projects for additional funding;
<LI> To develop a software application for integrating, presenting and analyzing European data on disease burden and cost of illness from zoonotic pathogens.
Setting disease priorities is an issue for all policy makers involved in public health care. Work package 23 aims to develop strategies and models to provide stepwise and transparent approaches to estimating priorities in a number of zoonotic diseases at the European level. At the first meeting in July 2006 in Berlin, Germany, participants of Workpackage 23 discussed and agreed the objectives of this project. The approach of partner institute, RIVM, for estimating the burden and costs of foodborne pathogens in the Netherlands was accepted as the basis for this workpackage. Participants presented data availability for their respective countries. An outline of a consensus protocol, detailing all choices to be made in the project, was agreed and will be consolidated before the next meeting planned for January 2007, in Uppsala, Sweden. <P>
An international conference on "Priority setting of foodborne and Zoonotic pathogens" was organised jointly with Workpackage 28 and the US Food Safety Research Consortium. The conference, held at BfR, Berlin, 19-21 July 2006, was attended by 121 participants from Europe, The USA, New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong and featured 31 plenary presentations, 21 posters and two discussion sessions.
The goal of the conference was to promote progress in food safety priority setting by identifying key scientific issues and opportunities and fostering international scientific collaboration. <P>
The conference provided an overview of current approaches used for ranking the public health impacts of foodborne and zoonotic diseases, including methods to integrate data on incidence of morbidity and mortality, attribution of illnesses to different sources of exposure, and social valuation of health outcomes. The conference focused on key conceptual issues and data gaps and on exploring opportunities for international collaboration..
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