On Friday January the 11th there was a meeting about MRSA and antibiotic resistance in the Netherlands. The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality organised the meeting for several interested SAFEFOODERA participants. Italy, France, Germany, England, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands were represented.

The meeting resulted with eleven topics for promising joint activities. The following step will be prioritization and clustering of the topics.
Looking back we think we had a successful meeting and we look forward for further cooperation.

Organizers,

Jan Lambers and Mirjam Snijdelaar

The 5th SAFEFOODERA European Steering Committee (ESC) meeting was held 27-28 September 2007 in Bilbao, Basque Country. The main topic discussed was the sustainability of SAFEFOODERA, including:

The meeting was prolonged with a fantastic roundtrip to Rioja Alavesa and the wonderful city of San Sebastian, guided by Monica de Prado.

The last SAFEFOODERA ESC-meeting will be in Reykjavik, Iceland, in June 2008

An extraordinary PMG-meeting was held in Reykjavik, Iceland 18 - 19 April 2007 to discuss a strategy for bringing SAFEOODERA from a project to a sustainable organisation by:

1. Examining the feasibility of establishing a global system of food safety research hubs.
2. Investigate the potential to use these hubs as an aid to developing a globally facing research program to address transnational food safety priorities in Europe.
3. Deepening the research platform (being established in Safefoodera) to proactively describe new or re-emerging chemical and/or microbial risks from farm to fork and fish to dish.
4. Ensure that there is linkage to other relevant European and non-European food safety research initiatives with regard to the planning of future transnational research.
5. Maximise the opportunity for creating added value at national level by developing further transnational calls, including the processes for identifying the priority topics and the management of the calls.

The fifth and final SAFEFOODERA stakeholder meeting was successfully completed at Bundesinstitute fuer Risikobewertung (BfR) in Berlin on 30 March with a group representing EFSA, European Commission, Scientists, Food service sector and Consumers.

The group discussed: Can SAFEFOODERA be developed into a sustainable platform for funding and managing transnational research that delivers knowledge and capabilities aimed at protecting consumers against health risks from the consumptions of foods?

A report from the meeting will soon be available on the SAFEFOODERA website.