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Statistical Information on Food-borne Disease In Europe microbiological and chemical hazards

Year of publication 2002

Author Nutrition Division

Product type Meeting

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) Foodborne disease caused by microbiological hazards is a large and growing public health problem. Most countries with systems for reporting cases of foodborne diseases have documented significant increases over the past few decades in the incidence of diseases caused by micro-organisms in food, including Salmonella spp., Campylobacter jejuni, Listeria monocytogenes or E. coli O157 among others. Chemicals are a significant source of foodborne diseases, although effects are often difficult to link with a particular food. Chemical contaminants in food include natural toxicants such as mycotoxins or environmental contaminants such as dioxins, mercury, lead, and radionuclides. Food additives, pesticide and veterinary drugs are widely used too and it is essential to assure that these uses are safe. Surveillance of foodborne disease and food contamination monitoring are essential tools for risk assessment. For this reason main efforts are directed to the development of adequate meth ods of surveillance of foodborne diseases and food contamination monitoring to provide the necessary data for quantitative microbiological and chemical risk assessment. This paper presents both data on foodborne diseases in the European Region and information on chemical contaminants, additives and residues in foods that may have an adverse impact in health. Future directions to prevent both microbiological and chemical hazards are discussed.

Meeting symbol PEC 01 04

Language English

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