£19.2M to tackle “silent pandemic” of foodborne pathogens via genomic tech

29 Jul 2021 --- The UK government has awarded £19.2 million (US$27.7 million) to the Pathogen Surveillance in Agriculture, Food and the Environment (PATH-SAFE) project.

This pathogen surveillance program tests genomic technologies in the surveillance of foodborne pathogens and antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) microbes in all four nations of the UK. Better understanding and monitoring of these pathogens could save thousands of lives in the UK every year.

The project funded through the second round of Her Majesty’s Treasury’s Shared Outcomes Fund brings together the Food Standards Agency (FSA), Food Standards Scotland (FSS), the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), Public Health England (PHE) and the Environment Agency.  

Tracking foodborne and antimicrobial-resistant pathogens
The funding will support a three-year project to develop a pilot national surveillance network. It will use the latest DNA-sequencing technology and environmental sampling to improve the detection and tracking of foodborne and antimicrobial-resistant pathogens through the whole agri-food system. 

The funding will support a three-year project to develop a pilot national surveillance network.The heart of this virtual network will be a new database that will permit the analysis, storage and sharing of pathogen sequence. It will also source data collected from multiple locations across the UK by both government and public organizations. 

“Foodborne disease in the UK is estimated to cause around 2.4 million cases of illness a year,” says Robin May, chief scientific adviser for the FSA. 

The cost of this burden on society is estimated at over £9 billion (US$12.5 billion) per year. 

“This project is designed to help safeguard UK food, agriculture and consumers by using cutting-edge technology to understand how pathogens and AMR spread. Tracking the source of these issues will ultimately help us to develop better control strategies to reduce illness and deaths,” May outlines. 

A major risk to public health
According to Gideon Henderson, chief scientific adviser for Defra, antimicrobial resistance poses a significant risk to public health. The loss of functional antibiotics can cause 10 million additional global deaths every year by 2050. 

“To put this in context, the current pandemic has so far caused around three million deaths globally.”

“Foodborne disease in the UK is estimated to cause around 2.4 million cases of illness a year,” says the FSA.“UK sales of antibiotics for food-producing animals have halved in the last six years. This vital new project will build on that progress and ensure antibiotics continue to remain effective for both people and animals.” 

Dame Sally Davies, UK Special Envoy on AMR, says AMR is “a silent pandemic” that poses a severe threat to modern medicine and our planet by making common infections even more difficult to treat in both humans and animals. 

“To tackle this global threat, we need to make better use of our technological advances and strengthen our ability to collect, analyze and share health data from all aspects of life.”

“Building on the progress made at the G7 meetings this year, this new project will help us identify how pathogens and AMR spread through analyzing food, environment and health factors. Through this joined-up approach, we will be able to take decisive action to save thousands of lives every year,” she states. 

The holistic view of health
This project reflects the “One Health” approach, recognizing that health, food and environment are all linked and that AMR in the environment can have profound implications for other sectors. 

“The project will help us to understand the complex role that the environment plays in the development, maintenance and transport of resistance leading to the exposure of people, animals and crops,” adds Doug Wilson, chief scientist for the Environment Agency.

“We can finally begin to add environmental knowledge to build a true “One Health” approach to AMR.”

The UK government’s Shared Outcomes Fund (SOF) tests ways of bringing together the public sector. It aims to address cross-cutting issues in a way that improves outcomes and ensures value for money. 

Edited by Elizabeth Green