News

Kick off meetings for REFHEPA and REDRISK were held on 6th and 7th of February at IFREMER, Issy-les-Moulineaux in Paris. These projects are closely linked and there will be considerable interaction between them throughout their lives. The projects will ensure the mobilisation of the leading scientists in Europe in this area of virus contamination in shellfish and will focus practical research in this important area of seafood safety. Holding the meetings on consecutive allowed attendance at both meetings for some project participant and thus helped to forge early links between researchers.

3.1 REFHEPA

The REFHEPA project leader Albert Bosch presented an overview of the objectives of the project. These are to develop standardised quantitative methodologies, to be implemented in guidelines for norovirus and hepatitis A virus surveillance in bivalve molluscs. Project partners gave further presentations on their current experiences and the state of the art in this area. It was encouraging to note that knowledge in this area is advancing rapidly. In particular very recent advances in the potential for using the real-time quantitative assay format in this area was welcome. This means the prospects for succeeding in producing standardised methods in this technically difficult and ambitious project are greatly enhanced. However it was recognised that considerable challenges remain.

Further discussion between participants centred on the activities for the first 18 months of the project and the following was agreed.

Existing information presented at the meeting should be used as a starting point for developing procedures for norovirus detection. It is important to validate the methods in shellfish as these represent unique challenges compared with other matrices. Methods must be exquisitely sensitive due to the extremely low levels of contamination of shellfish. Strain variability must be taken in consideration, particularly for norovirus detection. It is important to validate the methods with isolates from different geographies. Need for standardized reference materials. Confirmation procedures could be important. The use of different target regions for amplification could be beneficial or even indispensable. Are differences in equipment relevant for Real-Time procedures? Need to keep close contact with scientists involved in related projects.

3.2 REDRISK

This meeting was the first opportunity for all representatives of REDRISK to meet and exchange views on their objectives, interests and tasks in the programme. The project leader Monique Pommepuy summarized the REDRISK objectives, tasks and milestones. The main objective is to significantly reduce the risk during the primary production of bivalve molluscs. The effort will be focused on 2 actions:

To understand the factors leading to viral contamination during the primary production To define the best way for risk control: to develop a chain production that ensures shellfish quality and safety including the limitation of inputs of microbial sources on harvesting areas, introducing warning systems on production areas through HACCP procedures.

Discussion centred around identifying the major issues within the project in attempting to meet the project objectives. These included;

Need to include shellfish producers within the project Recognising the sources of contamination including dinstinguishing between human and animal contamination identifying the parameters leading to viral contamination Detection of viruses in wastewater and shellfish (Linked to REFHEPA) Identifying the criteria for selection of study sites potential UK, Spain and FR sites and criteria for selecting the study sites The potential for further producers in other area to contribute to the work programme and fund related work in their countries

From these discussions a programme of work was developed for the first 18 months of the project. A further meeting was planned to be held in June at the Molluscan Shellfish Safety conference to be held in Galway, Ireland 14-18th June 2004 where most of the participants will be attending and would be available for dicussion.