Seafood Safety and Quality Professional Development Group

Webinars

• Don’t be Shellfish! Use Next Generation Sequencing to Improve Seafood Safety and Quality Jun 27, 2023

  Organized by: IAFP's Seafood Safety and Quality

  Seafood safety and quality research primarily focuses on two areas: the presence of pathogens and spoilage. Spoilage is traditionally evaluated using microbiological, chemical, and/or sensory analyses of products. Pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, and parasites, are commonly detected with molecular methods, including real-time PCR and Sanger sequencing. However, as next-generation sequencing (NGS) approaches such as metagenomics and whole genome sequencing (WGS) are more readily available, their use can provide a broader perspective on seafood safety and quality compared with classic molecular techniques. While WGS and metagenomic tools are frequently applied to other food commodities, the application of these powerful tools towards seafood safety, quality, and outbreak investigations is not as widespread. Key questions remain about NGS and seafood research. Focusing on seafood safety and quality, this webinar will delve into metagenomics and WGS as tools for a better understanding of pathogens and spoilage organisms, and their associated public health risks.

  Learning Objectives:

  -Explore recent advancements of NGS tools in seafood safety and quality research and application of these tools to seafood spoilage with an emphasis of comparison to traditional methods.
  -Apply metagenomics to bacterial and viral analyses of seafood safety.
  -Discuss lessons learned in overcoming the challenges of seafood matrices to generate impactful NGS data for practical applications.

  Presenters

  • Foteini Parlapani, Presenter University of Thessaly
  • Sabrina Mace, Presenter Ifremer
  • Christopher Grim, Presenter U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
  • Soizick Le Guyader, Presenter Ifremer
  • Marlee Mims, Presenter & Moderator U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
  • Rachel Rodriguez, Moderator U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
• A Changing Environment: Impacts on Seafood Safety Oct 16, 2020

  The constantly changing environment impacts food safety in many ways, particularly seafood safety and the seafood industry. Documented changes of the ocean's temperatures, pH, and salinity impact the marine and estuarine environments from which we harvest our seafood. In addition to these global trends, storm activity has increased the freshwater influx to certain estuarine areas (e.g, the United States Gulf Coast) in recent years. 
  While some of these changes may be transient, they have the potential to impact the resident bacteria and phytoplankton populations and species, which can affect human health. For example: pathogenic Vibrio species generally favor warm environments, so their areas of residence and levels may shift with changing water temperatures; and phytoplankton species, some responsible for toxic blooms, have the potential to increase in areas where freshwater influxes bring a heavier nutrient load. These environmental changes may be impacting seafood safety, both due to emerging hazards and geographic expansion of known hazards. This presents a challenge for the seafood industry as well as public health risk managers. 
  This session will provide examples of the impacts of the changing environment on seafood safety and include a perspective from industry.

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  Presenters

  • Craig Baker-Austin, Panelist Centre for Environment, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Science, UK
  • Angelo DePaola, Panelist DePaola Consulting, USA
  • Stacey McLeroy, Panelist U.S. Food and Drug Administration, USA
  • Mike Parsons, Panelist Florida Gulf Coast University, USA
  • Jessica Jones, Moderator U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory, USA
  • Lorraine McIntyre, Moderator British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, Canada