Viruses and Food

Foodborne and waterborne viruses are currently acknowledged to be the source of a major public health issue in many parts of the world. These viruses are directly transmitted into the gastrointestinal tract via food and water and can induce gastroentiritis or hepatitis. This problem is referred to as emerging and requires that particular attention should be paid to informing the authorities, consumers and professional sectors about high-risk foodstuffs and the working methods concerned.
As this has implications for public health, it has been thought useful and advisable that the Superior Health Council (SHC) should draw up a synthetic assessment of the situation at the national level and issue recommendations on this subject, taking into account current developments within other national and international scientific bodies.
An ad hoc working group of the SHC (which included experts in food microbiology and virology) has reviewed the information that is currently available on the risks for humans involved in consuming foodstuffs contaminated by viruses, the purpose being to issue recommendations aimed at improving foodborne virus infection control. The SHC working group “foodstuff microbiology” then issued comments on the final version of this text, which it subsequently approved.
This document provides a brief survey of the main concepts that are discussed in the scientific report in the annex. It provides an overview of the following general aspects: the characteristics of the main foodborne viruses (and the questions that they may raise with the competent authorities) and the appropriate way to control outbreaks (i.e. how to behave in the event of an epidemic, at least from the viewpoint of foodborne transmission). The information collected is based on the recent scientific literature.