BIOTRACER's First General Meeting
14-16 November 2007
Athens, Greece
The first BIOTRACER General Meeting started with a presentation by the Coordinator, Jeffrey Hoorfar. Jeffrey's speech looked to the coming period of the Project, while acknowledging the past accomplishments.
Dr. Shaun Kennedy, Director of the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, gave the first keynote address of the meeting. His talk, 'Unraveling the Melamine Contamination Event', was a fascinating look at the melamine contamintion of pet food in the United States and elsewhere. His presentation showed how contamination could spread into the food chain. He used video clips and press releases to show how difficult it is to communicate risk to the public and show how easily a contamination event such as this can spin out of control in today's fast-paced news cycle.
Dr. Mansel Griffiths, International Advisory Board chair and Director of the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety, presented the second keynote address of the meeting on 15 November entitled 'Rapid Methods for Detection of Foodborne Pathogens'. His presentation was an A-Z look at all of the methods being used to detect foodborn pathogens. He also indicated where the field was going in the future.
Over the three days, Research Areas in feed, meat, dairy and bio-terror held seminars to report on the achievements and next steps for the project. The Research Area on modelling presented chain-specific updates during each of the seminars.
During the meeting, posters were presented in the National Bank of Greece Training Centre by participants of BIOTRACER. A competition was held for the top three posters. Mansel Griffiths and Shaun Kennedy were the judges of the compeition. The winners were
- 'Use of EMA-PCR and direct sequencing for detection of viable and dead cells in mixed samples'
- Beate Skånseng, Monika Zimonja, Signe Drømtorp and Knut Rudi
- 'CBD bead-based detection and quantification of Listeria monocytogenes from raw milk'
- George Walcher, Beatrix Stessl, Martin Wagner and Inge Hein
- 'The development of a microarray procedure for the detection and characterization of Salmonella'
- Henk Aarts, Pieter Vos, Stephan Huehn, Jonas Larsson and Burkhard Malorny
No trip to Athens would be complete without a tour of the sites or dancing the 'Syrtaki'. With help from our host, Panos Skandamis of the Agricultural University of Athens, the meeting participants had a beautiful tour of Athens by night. Of course, the dinner afterwards with a breathtaking view of the Acropolis made the evening that much more special.
The BIOTRACER General Meeting flyer was the main source of information about the meeting. The flyer includes all of the pertinent information for the meeting, including a schedule of events, maps, and instructions on getting from the airport to the facility and hotels.
BIOTRACER participants can download presentations and meeting information on the e-management tool site (https://biotracer.bal-pm.eu) under Events/BIOTRACER 2007 General Meeting.
