Abstract

Progress and Challenges of Enteric Virus Detection in Foods

Albert Bosch, Professor, University of Barcelona

The inclusion of virus analysis in regulatory standards for viruses in food or water samples must overcome several shortcomings, among others, the technical difficulties and high costs of virus monitoring, the lack of harmonized and standardized assays and the challenge posed by the ever changing nature of the principal target viruses. Methods cited in the literature for the detection of enteric viruses in food and water matrices are diverse, complex, poorly standardized and restricted to a few specialist laboratories. It is obvious that QA/QC issues must be solved and molecular procedures must be simplified and automated before they could be adopted by routine monitoring laboratories and considered by regulatory agencies when formulating guidelines for virus standards. The CEN/TC275/WG6/TAG4 committee developed ISO proposals for sensitive and quantitative RT-PCR based methods for the detection of hepatitis A virus and noroviruses that may enable the formulation of regulatory standards for virus in food. These procedures have been validated on naturally contaminated fresh produce and irrigation water. Later on, a multiplex real-time RT-PCR assay based on the CEN procedure was developed for the simultaneous detection of HAV, NoV GI, NoV GII and Mengovirus.