Scientific Opinion on the evaluation of molecular typing methods for major food-borne microbiological hazards and their use for attribution modelling, outbreak investigation and scanning surveillance: Part 1 (evaluation of methods and applications)

Molecular typing methods are laboratory techniques, such as whole genome sequencing, that enable the classification and comparison of strains of disease-causing bacteria.

The European Food Safety Authority's Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ), in December 2013, completed its review of the methods for typing the food-borne pathogens Salmonella, Escherichia coli, Listeria and Campylobacter, and evaluated the effectiveness of these methods for: a) Detecting and identifying food-borne outbreaks; b) Estimating the contribution of various sources to food-borne illnesses; c) Predicting which strains of food-borne pathogens may potentially cause epidemics.

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