Research to enable the prevention and control of food-borne pathogens must involve all stages of the food supply chain from ‘farm to fork’. However, traditionally research on zoonotic agents has been highly fragmented. To address this, the EU 6th Framework Programme has provided support of €14.4m for five years to develop a Network of Excellence for Integrated Research on the Prevention and Control of Zoonoses. This network is called MED-VET-NET and starts on 1st September 2004.

MED-VET-NET involves:

• 16 European partners, including 8 veterinary reference laboratories and 7 public health institutes
• 10 European countries
• Society for Applied Microbiology (SfAM), responsible for network communications
• Project Co-ordinator, the French Food Safety Agency, Paris (AFSSA)
• An elected Project Manager, Diane Newell (VLA)
• A Governing Board, comprising director-level representatives from each partner to ensure effective integration of all the partners
• A Co-ordinating Forum, including scientific representatives from all the partners, to develop, commission and implement the joint scientific strategies and research

Initially, over 300 key scientists have been identified with the necessary complementary expertise and skills. They include veterinarians, medics, food scientists, bacteriologists, virologists, parasitologists, molecular biologists, risk analysts, epidemiologists, statisticians, bioinformatists and economists. Many of these key scientists are international experts in their fields and it is envisioned they will work within a ‘virtual institute’.

The network will undertake work in seven activity areas, three of which will be overarching:

• developing the virtual institute
• enabling strategic scientific integration
• disseminating knowledge

The other four activity areas will focus on jointly executed research in:

• epidemiology
• host-microbe interactions
• detection and control
• risk analysis

In the first 18 months, 11 research workpackages will be funded on widely diverse topics. VLA is involved in most of these and will lead the workpackages on Lyssaviruses and Campylobacter virulence.

MED-VET-NET will provide the appropriate environment for scientists, from throughout Europe and of multiple disciplines, to come together in order to share and enhance their knowledge and skills, develop collaborative projects and present joint research within and outside the network. It is anticipated that such a comprehensive scientific network will form the basis of a future sustainable European Zoonoses Institute.

Zoonotic diseases have always represented a risk to humans but recent events have demonstrated that these risks can change as a result of:

• global travel and international livestock trade
• increasing encroachment of man and livestock into previously un-inhabited habitats
• increasing contact between man and exotic animals as pets
• changes in livestock production including intensification
• shifts in human eating and food preparation habits
• mutations resulting in increased virulence of organisms
• development of new transmission routes
• increasingly susceptible human populations

Over 75% of new and emerging infections are zoonoses and some of these have serious global consequences - Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) for example.

The MED-VET-NET Network Click here to open