20th Anniversary FSAI conference
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) organised a conference to celebrate its 20th anniversary and was held in Dublin on 21st – 22nd August. The Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) was invited to the symposium to present EuroCigua to the attendees.
The first day began with a plenary session about the future challenges of risk assessment. It featured speakers such as Bernhard Url, Director of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), Diane Benford, vice chair of EFSA Scientific Committee, and Séamus Fannig, from the UCD Centre for Food Safety. The plenary session of the second day, “The science behind regulated foods”, involved the participation of Albert Flynn and Colin Hill, from University College Cork, and John Bell, from DG Research & Innovation at European Commission. Both sessions were followed by more than 20 presentations on chemical safety and biological safety from different European scientific institutions and food safety national agencies.
Dr. Ana Canals, International and Scientific Advisor of AESAN, participated as a speaker presenting the outcomes of the project up to that date, including the epidemiological data (165 cases from 23 outbreaks reported in Europe), the presence of Gambierdiscus in Balearic Islands, the rate of CTX-positive fish samples in Madeira (20%) and the Canary Islands (13%), the implementation of a LC-MS/MS method for the detection of CTX, the confirmation of the analogue Caribbean-CTX-1 as the main responsible of the contamination of fish in European waters and, finally, the potential impact of climate change and globalized markets on the expansion of ciguatera to Europe. Her intervention at the conference was reported in an article published by Food Navigator, available here.
Apart from this event, members of EuroCigua have attended other seminaries and workshops during the third year of the project where they explained the project and the results achieved thus far, enhancing the visibility of the project and promoting future collaborations. Some of the seminars attended were: the workshop “Risk assessment and communication in the food chain: EFSA and the European National Authorities. Models of collaboration” held in Rome in December 2018, the presentation of the campaign “UE: juntos protegemos” in Madrid in February 2019, the meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Harmful Algal Blooms (IPHAB) held in Paris in April 2019, and the V International Conference on Quality and Food Safety, organized by ACOFESAL in Madrid in June 2019.
Access to Conference Programme
For further information, please click on the following links:
Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) Conference
Campaign “UE: juntos protegemos”
Intergovernmental Panel on Harmful Algal Blooms (IPHAB)
V International Conference on Quality and Food Safety, ACOFESAL