Food safety conference
Sarah O’Brien
Professor Sarah O’Brien from the University of Liverpool spoke to delegates about the latest science on deadly pathogens, social media and reformulation.
O’Brien is also the chair of the FSA’s Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food.
O’Brien: “Antimicrobial resistance has now become as big a risk as terrorism. The danger posed by antimicrobial resistance should be included on the national risk register – it’s a ticking time bomb [said chief medical officer Sally Davies] and another phrase that has been used to describe it is an ‘apocalyptic threat’.
“People are genuinely talking about treatment for people and animals essentially running out in 10 to 20 years, so it is a big deal. One of the big debates is how much antimicrobial resistance is potentially transmitted through the food chain as well as the use of antibiotics in human and veterinary medicine.
To hear more why O’Brien said doctors, farmers and vets need to stop arguing about antimicrobial resistance and work together to beat it, watch our video with O’Brien here.
On social media she said: “There are lots of initiatives at the moment … comparing the incidences of tweets about sickness bugs and correlating it with laboratory reports about norovirus.
“In North American they’ve gone further and are now using Twitter to inform Chicago about instances of food poisoning. The same thing is happening in New York, where they are using analysis of twitter data to try and predict where there could be cases of food poisoning.
“We can increasingly see these kinds of data being used in future to find out where food poisoning is happening.
“As Campden BRI pointed out recently, reformulation can pose food safety risks. Sugar and salt are preservatives. We need to beware the law of unintended consequences as that reformulation takes place.”