23-25 May 2016

FAO Headquarters, Rome, Italy

The Technical Meeting report is available here.

Background

The Technical Meeting on the impact of Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) for food safety management was held at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy on 23- 25 May 2016. More than 170 people including public sector officials working in the area of food safety as well as experts from private sector, civil society organizations, research/academic institutions and international organizations participated in the meeting.

The meeting was held in three days including the 9^th meeting of Global Microbial Identifier (GMI) for two days. The FAO session held on 23 May 2016 provided an overview of the Technical Paper entitled “Applications of Whole Genome Sequencing in food safety management” developed by FAO in collaboration with WHO and discussed benefits and potential drawbacks of WGS, considerations for developing countries and key needs on global actions and potential roles of international organizations. On 24 and 25 May 2016, the meeting included the topic of currently available systems for WGS, global WGS capacity in identification and characterization of pathogens, initiatives and activities related to epidemiology and surveillance, issues around international data-sharing and activities and global trend on metagenomics. There were two break-out sessions for 4 GMI Working Groups (WGs).  

On the occasion of the Technical Meeting, a poster session was held on all the three days. The topics of the posters range from research projects on WGS of specific microorganisms, developing national strategy to bring pathogen genomics into practice, different platforms for detection and analysis of foodborne outbreaks, to use of WGS in a factory environment. Experts shared and discussed their projects on the topic of WGS and food safety. The compilation of the abstracts of all posters are available for download.

Agenda 

• Final agenda 

Presentations  

1. FAO Session on Monday 23 May 2016: Presentations on; 
   1. Objectives of the Technical Meeting
   2. The Technical Paper developed by FAO in collaboration with WHO
   3. Presentation on benefits and potential drawbacks on performance and cost 
   4. Challenges in Applying Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) in Regulatory Framework 
   5. Considerations for developing countries on the topic of WGS and food safety by Masami Takeuchi, FAO
2. GMI Meeting, Tuesday 24 May 2016: Presentations on;
   1. The GMI initiative, FAO and WHO initiatives/activities on WGS
   2. Active system
   3. Identification/characterization – global capacity
   4. Epidemiology and surveillance
3. GMI Meeting, Wednesday 25 May 2016: Presentations on;
   1. International data sharing
   2. Metagenomics
   3. Conclusion and a way forward

Recordings of the Technical Meeting 

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