PATH-SAFE Webinar Series, June 2023 - Rapid diagnostic technologies for Foodborne Pathogens

foreign good morning everybody um we're just hitting 10 o'clock now we've still got a few people joining so we'll just give it a second and then we'll launch into our June path safe webinar thank you okay the number's joining us steady now so first of all and welcome everyone to the fourth installment of a path safe webinar series um today we're joined by colleagues from ferrisciences limited who are leading the pathway correction 3A project which aims to identify and assess portable diagnostic technologies that have the potential to be applied to foodborne pathogens we'll start the session today with a brief introduction to the context of this project given by Rick Munford our deputy director for science evidence and research and deputy chief Scientific Advisor here at the FSA the ferry team will then present an overview of the work that they have undertaken to date and plans for the next stages of the project following the presentation there'll be a question and answer session so firstly just a few housekeeping elements before we begin the session today has been recorded and the recording and the slides will be saved to the Passaic web and website in due course the session is going to be an hour long running through till 11AM could we ask if you please keep your microphone on mute when you're not speaking and as mentioned we will have a question and answer session following the presentation please use a question answer function to post any questions you have and when we come to the question and answer session we'll ask you to unmute and ask your question any questions that we don't get to or can't be answered online we'll follow up offline after the meeting and please note the chat function has been disabled for this webinar format A Link to the Past safe web page will be pinned in the Q a section shortly for your reference so with that I will hand over direct starters off hi Rachel thank you for that so um I thought it was just um be interesting to give a couple of minutes just explaining some of the context and some of the background to to work stream three um and explain why why would we be interested in in using sort of portable remote diagnostic Technologies um so going right back to the beginning of past that pass safe when the when the bid was put into the shared outcomes fund um the whole premise was to look at new technologies in particular new technologies based on genomics so DNA technology and obviously we're all a lot more familiar with the power of that since since covid um because many of us would have had a real-time PCR test and we all heard about the stories about Wastewater testing Etc so um there's real sort of power in this technology and past safe is looking at that in many aspects so it's looking at things like whole genome sequencing in work stream one and and can we better characterize pathogens and anti-microbial resistance in words theme 2 is looking things like Wastewater testing and can we look at a population level or an environment level where where foodborne disease might be um but work stream 3 is specifically focused on um these these these portable Technologies so the idea could you take something like real-time PCR out into the field and and use it rather than a traditional often slower approach whereby you might take a sample send it to a laboratory who then test it and send it back send back the results so that's the kind of broad context to what we're doing here with this work stream um so it's it's all about Pilots it's all about looking at the feasibility of these Technologies it's not necessarily about oh we will do a test and then we'll roll these things out on on April 2024 it's about can these things actually work we know there are Technologies out there but how close are they to being used in the field and put into the hands of of professionals who can use them so that's the kind of background to where we are and this is um giving us an update on the work that fair have been doing to investigate that put a framework around um the different diagnostic Technologies around there and then see if there are particular Pilots that we might be able to roll out so I'm going to stop there um hopefully that was good enough to set the context and I think I'm going to hand over to um our colleagues at fair enough is that right Rachel yep that's correct thanks Rick okay thanks hi everyone can everyone hear me and see the slides okay yeah that looks great thank you Ashley okay great um so good morning everyone today we're going to be talking about past safe work stream 3A which is a horizon scanning and Technology Readiness level study with in-field testing of Rapid diagnostic Technologies So today we're going to be discussing what we've done so far and then our next steps so here's just a picture of our team for the project made up of scientists from ferre and then also a collaborator from the University of Lincoln and today I'm going to be talking about the literature review and evaluation of technologies that we've done during the project and then Barbara's going to be talking through some of our engagement with stakeholders and end users and so the work we're undertaking is separated into three work packages so the first is centered around a literature review of the Technologies available for on-site testing either currently applied for foodborne pathogens but also a broad search to include Technologies applied in other fields such as plant Health veterinary sciences or human health and alongside this the development of a technology Readiness level framework to evaluate where these Technologies are in their development and Readiness for deployment so traditional Frameworks remain heavily based on sort of NASA descriptions but the aim was to modify this framework to make it more appropriate for our work and then finally putting these together to create a database of the identified Technologies and their assessed technology Readiness levels alongside this work package 2 involved engagement with stakeholders to look at where we could make the biggest impact and why Technologies could be best deployed and what benefits they could provide and then the results of these first two work packages are going to go into work package three where we're going to pick two technologies and to take forward and develop in pilot studies to try and increase their Readiness for deployment so here's just um a demonstration of the scope of our project so we were focusing on foodborne pathogen targets such as norovirus compiler Factor salmonella listeria clostridium and other indicator organisms such as E coli um and the sample Matrix is included were water meat shellfish Dairy swaps animal feed fish fresh produce and ready to eat products so quite a broad scope so we had two searches in our literature review one which focused on on-site methods for foodborne pathogens and then a more General search which was looking at on-site novel methods in any field and our literature search looked a literature from the last five years so from 2018 to 2023 so these searches returned about 28 000 papers 8 000 which were removed by the software we were using as duplicates but we then had around 16 000 papers to screen by reading the title and abstract and deciding whether it was relevant and we wanted to take it forward to our full text review stage so we then had over 3 000 papers to evaluate in the full text review and these were grouped into the Technologies which the paper was looking at so at the end of our initial screening stage we had a table which looked something like this this is just a small part of it but you can see the results of the Technologies we found during the literature research and then the numbers of papers in each category sort of give us an idea of how prevalent they were in literature so we then went on to evaluate each of these Technologies using the full text literature um according to our technology Readiness level assessment so now I'm just going to briefly go over our technology Readiness level framework in a bit more detail um so we didn't really consider technology Readiness levels one and two which in the NASA definitions are sort of around concept generation and we didn't think these low trls would be very represented in the published literature or wouldn't be within the scope of the project to take forward in pilot studies so the framework starts around technology Readiness level 3 where laboratory demonstration of the technology starts including experiments around the concept feasibility and then technology Readiness level 4 is when the technology is being applied to detection of a model pathogen so this doesn't have to be an in-scope pathogen but it's just been demonstrated with any Target pathogen and at this point we're just talking about individual component Technologies being tested within the lab still a technology Readiness level five the technology we're evaluating will have been applied to a relevant in scope pathogen um and Technology Readiness level six is where the technology has been put together with all the necessary components which would make it suitable for on-site testing and its performance evaluated in the lab so for example when we're looking at evaluating these sort of molecular biology Technologies it would have had to be paired with a suitable DNA extraction suitable for on-site testing to reach um technology Readiness level six a technology Readiness level 7 is when the technology has been tested outside of the lab when in a relevant setting with end users and to reach technology reading the Civil eight it will have had its performance fully evaluated in an in-field setting and then finally technology Readiness level 9 is when it's overcome any additional logistical barriers or hurdles and it's fully deployed or Deployable so we used a technology Readiness level assignment tool to answer questions based on our framework about each of the Technologies we were assessing to guide the technology Readiness level assignment and our assignment is just based on the needs of this particular project using obviously the framework developed for the project and just based on the results of our literature search which covered the last five years so we ended up with a database with a summary like in the picture here which again is just a small part of the overall table where we had a number for the highest technology Readiness level we thought had been achieved in any organism so for example if it had been deployed in a different area for example covid-19 testing then that would be shown here and then we assessed the highest TRL achieved for each of the target pathogens so we could see if it had been not applied to the Target at all it would be trl4 and or what level it had achieved so if it had been applied to a Target but not taken outside the lab or if it had been fully deployed in some areas for the Target pathogen so this gives us an idea if we're going to select a certain technology for a certain application what the next steps would be in terms of trying to progress it through the technology Readiness levels towards the deployment so now I'm going to hand over to Barbara to talk about the work in work package 2. thank you okay yes uh right so as we saw at the beginning um I I'm just talking and assuming anyone or everyone can hear me and shout if you can't but um as you saw at the beginning of the presentation the aim of work package 2 was to work alongside the science team and to help identify and integrate end user needs so this way we wanted to ensure that the selected Technologies are able to address first of all real world needs and second that we take into account any specific requirements to make them fit for purpose and to allow them to be integrated into existing processes so uh we started by creating a map of all the different stakeholders based on the scope of the project which again you saw earlier and this is the result so don't worry too much about the detail I know the writing is very small but the key message here is that the broad scope in terms of pathogens obviously also translated into an extensive stakeholder map so we have domestic stakeholders across multiple primary Industries and then also Downstream um along the supply chain and in addition we there's obviously also um uh monitoring and testing processes including for example import controls um yeah so what we then did was on the next slide is we wanted to start with a more strategic overview of where gaps and needs May potentially lie within that supply chain and testing environment and uh and to be honest also see if there's anything that we can possibly exclude straight away but uh yes anyway still we organized a couple of focus groups with members from different organizations including obviously the FSA but also defra apha cfas and UK HSA and then we also had a couple of individual conversations where people couldn't make um did the focus group and then we followed those up with individual interviews uh with what we called operational end users so those who would actually be either doing the testing themselves or have quality assurance teams to do the testing um and initially we were also planning to do focus groups here but all the lovely bank holidays have made that a bit more difficult so we ended up with uh one-on-one calls and conversations or sometimes one on two if there were a couple of representatives from different teams in an organization that wanted to join and yeah there's still some last ones trickling in but essentially we've covered a number of primary Industries as well as businesses along the supply chain including sort of processing retail up to ready to eat products and also Port health and Laboratory Testing so hopefully we should have a good a good picture by now and yeah so all these conversations were really interesting uh for me lots of new information because I usually work in plant health so on my last slide I just wanted to Briefly summarize what we spoke about though I won't again go into too much detail uh unsurprisingly there was quite a difference in perceived needs between statutory testing and non-satitary or additional testing um essentially most people were immediately gravitating towards additional testing as an opportunity for portable Technologies because statutory testing by its very nature is basically quite strictly regulated so um you'd need to consider accreditation shareability results Etc uh however and we did have some conversations around that as well that doesn't necessarily mean that there can't be benefits in changing the statutory testing it just means that there needs to be a lot more work and thought around example determining potential benefits and to make sure that the the ultimate outcomes are comparable or better and by that I don't necessarily mean just pure test performance um I mean the overall outcome of the testing so for example if portable tests are performing less well but you can do a hell of a lot more uh that might still overall be preferable um so we're currently exploring also uh how that could look like for formal import testing ports and in terms of the non-statitude testing sort of a number of different scenarios were highlighted uh some of those relate to customer Assurance for example norovirus and shellfish tests would be uh really useful to prove safety to Consumers there's also an opportunity for improved quick hygiene testing so for example environmental swaps of countertops where speed is obviously key so you know immediately if you need to reclean or or um also for process trials in factories um and another scenario was to help with production decisions so for example test irrigation water to know which water sources is or isn't safe or unearned safe to use and yeah then the specific test requirements obviously depend very heavily on which scenario of those that we're looking at so for example test performance in a number of cases so actually I suppose in a lot of cases what you really want to know is whether um there are any viable pathogens present so anything that's infectious and can actually cause an issue rather than just pure absence presence um also for example for ubiquitous pathogens often you'd want to count on a threshold whereas if you're interested in a particular strain you'll obviously um that might be a very bad one where you just want to know if it's present or absent um and another thing that came up quite a lot across the board is the need for a portable test to not throw up a lot of presumptive results so which would require retesting which would then obviously counteract um your potential Time Savings um The Cost question is always an important one and actually very often for additional testing even if there isn't a disadvantage of having faster results costs would still or we were told costs would still need to be either comparative um or comparable or cheaper than the current lab standard um however there may be scenarios where the investment could be made by a specific group Organization for example agronomists who could then offer a service to anyone who wants the testing done and then lastly the ease of use so most or actually all stakeholders were happy with um some degree of complexity so it would just require proper training and training protocol obviously but that wasn't really seen as a problem the main issue here I think that was mentioned was that obviously we're talking about food production environments so you if you don't have proper separate laboratory facilities you don't really want to be messing around with life cultures of the stuff that you want to keep out so yeah um there's quite a few opportunities and sort of various ways in which those could be prioritized which we're still uh discussing the final detail of but yeah essentially what we want to make sure is that we use scenarios that are widely applicable possibly transferable but also make the most use of this being a pilot study and and being able to explore possibilities and I think with that I will hand back to Ashley okay thank you um so after considering the results of our literature review and assessment of Technologies and then the needs of stakeholders we went on to create a short list of Technologies which we thought we could take forward for the pilot study in work package three so firstly I'm just going to briefly talk about a few promising Technologies which we haven't included and why so first they sort of device Technologies such as lab on a chip and biosensor devices so these may be promising future Technologies and Diagnostics and a lot of research has been done into these so they featured prominently in our literature search from the past five years however in the literature they have not progressed far beyond the Prototype stage for the inscope pathogens so maxing out sort of around trl5 and we didn't feel like the scope of the pilot study could contribute to the development of these or it wouldn't be where our efforts would be best placed because we wouldn't want to just add another prototype to the many in the literature which may be unlikely to progress further and commercially available for inscope pathogens we wouldn't be in a position to sort of validate or test a current prototype and other Technologies which were promising but which we didn't choose to take forward were nanopore sequencing which also hasn't progressed past tier five for the targets mainly due to all the components needed for example a suitable DNA extraction suitable portable PCR platform and nanopore sequencing device and a way to do data analysis um another big hurdle was the complexity of use and data interpretation for end users and we thought it made more sense to try and progress other simpler molecular Technologies in the field first and these may act as a stepping stone for the use of nanopore sequencing in the future foreign list which I want to talk about is portable real-time PCR so many portable real-time PCR devices are now commercially available and the speed of PCR in the field is also rapidly decreasing um and we identified some of the platforms which had the most potential to be taken forward for foodborne pathogen detection so the advantages of these is that they can give rapid results so between 30 and 60 Minutes depending on the platform and they can be combined with PCR assays which are published and available in the literature so the tests available could be rapidly expanded on these platforms and they can be Multiplex to include test controls which can give more confidence in results and often in the literature they have displayed equivalent analytical sensitivity and specificity to laboratory real-time PCR tests and there are commercial kits available for in-scope pathogens on multiple real-time PCR platforms foreign so the disadvantages are that they will require a more complex protocol than other on-site detection Technologies including pipetting steps and with some having more liquid handling steps than others and the cost of buying the instrument could be unaffordable for some end users and you're looking at sort of five to ten pound test minimum with um ten thousand to twenty thousand initial investment in the instrument so if we did take this forward the next steps would sort of be maybe verification of the available kits in the lab with all the necessary components for on-site testing such as DNA extraction and optimizing the performance for a certain scenario and then demonstrating the optimized test um in an in-scope setting with relevant end users the next um technology I want to talk about was lump so this is another molecular technique suitable for on-site testing but has some benefits over PCR as the equipment needed can be much simpler so lump has multiple formats so it can be used with real-time instruments measuring fluorescence or turbidity but it can also be paired with more simple readout methods such as lfd or color change um its advantages are that it again can have similar analytical sensitivity and specificity to laboratory tests such as real-time PCR and there are assays available in the literature for all of our Target pathogens and they also can be made relatively equipment free which real-time PCR can't at the moment if you use these color change or lfd readouts the disadvantages are that it is again a relatively complex protocol including pipetting steps it can have a high cost especially if wanting to buy one of the real-time instruments and Sample to answer kits or less readily commercially available although there are companies which could properly readily make the kits if there was enough interest in buying them and then the next steps for taking forward these Technologies um for using the real-time machine we would again probably start with verification of a test with all the necessary components um and verification in the lab and then going on to field validation with end users if they are available and willing and then for the other formats such as the color change or lfd we might test multiple formats to see which one was best and then verify this with an insco pathogen in the lab and then go on to test the performance in a relevant setting with end users the next technology we're considering is a chemoluminescence method so this is based on a chemoluminescence probe which can be covalently linked to a specific enzyme liable group then if the target bacteria is present in the sample it expresses this specific enzyme which can cleave the enzyme-liable group from the chameleuminescence probe and this results in a reaction and cause an emission of light which can be measured so the technology is currently available for swabs of surfaces for certain bacteria the advantages are that it's a very simple protocol with a closed system so you've got very low chances of cross-contamination it's a relatively cheap test with less capital investment needed and it has high sensitivity it detects only live bacteria as they need to be expressing the enzyme there are commercial kits available for insco pathogens the disadvantage is that it does require an enrichment step so it's not going to be a super rapid test somewhere between 8 and 24 hours depending on the pathogen but this obviously could still provide some speed advantages over sending samples to a laboratory and the next steps we take with this technology is either verification of its diagnostic performance in an in-scope scenario um as the kits are sort of intended to be used and then to get end user feedback and identify any specific logistical barriers to deployment or we could try and adapt the tests for different matrices in the lab such as food rather than swabs and then optimize and test their performance so there's already been some published work optimizing the kits for dairy so it'd probably be possible to maybe use them for other food matrices and then lastly we have lateral flow tests so the advantages of these are obviously the simple protocol and interpretation of the results no instrument needed and a relatively low test cost and Commercial kits are available for all in-scope pathogens so the disadvantage is that they have quite low sensitivity unless combined again with an enrichment step which obviously makes the process more complicated and they only produce qualitative results um but the next steps we could take with lateral flow would again be to generate performance data in an in-scope setting where lfds are maybe not currently used but could be useful and then assess the generated data to see whether we think they are performing well and are reusable test in that scenario and collecting end user feedback of any barriers to your deployment so then finally I just wanted to pair some of these Technologies we are considering to scenarios which were mentioned by stakeholders as potential settings for on-site testing so firstly we have listeria swaps for environmental monitoring so we thought this could be paired with lfds or the chemoluminescence tests so these would be used as a risk management tool for factories and food processing or production settings with a focus on Ready-to-Eat products and as this would not be a required test but an additional test some companies might want to perform cost is likely to be a key factor and and why these Technologies were tools and and also the feedback given but generally simpler easier to perform tests um would be better next is E coli as a fecal indicator and another risk management tool which was mentioned um for shellfish meat and also irrigation water for fresh produce and we've paired this probably with lump or real-time PCR this is because generally it was mentioned that quantitative results would be most useful as e coli's widespread and also fast results are key for decision making and then finally testing for norovirus in shellfish and water would also be paired probably real-time PCR or lamp so the need for better norovirus testing in the shellfish industry was mentioned a number of times as a risk monitoring test and as there is an industry drive to prove safety to customers and speed was key for the shellfish industry and also the need for quantitative results monitoring Trends would be useful and so our next steps are to try and further narrow down um this list to try and take forward two technologies for pilot study in a relevant setting and that's um everything for me so I just wanted to acknowledge everyone who's involved in the work and also the funding the project so thank you thank you very much Ashley and barber for that really comprehensive overview of the the interesting work that's been going on with workstream 3A and so just looking over to the questions and answers um section that we've got and we've got one question that's coming from David Walker David I'm not sure if the question got answered during the presentation but if you wanted to come off mutant just um ask the question if it's still relevant and if anybody else got questions please feel free to drop them in the Q a or raise your hand come quick David are you there we can can see that you're off mute but can't hear you at the moment no it's gone for continue so maybe having some technical issues there um I don't know if can't see any more questions popping up in the the Q a side any hands raised and we'll give it a few minutes just in case anybody has anything specific so you can see Mark highlight with a hand up I I thank you that's um a really really interesting Visa but I'm from the uh on the meat hygiene inspector so I can really see the value in what you're doing and as well as some of the implications you're going to get down the line so I'll just I don't know it's a really early stages but I was wondering if you've got any um percentages so if you take these mobile units into into plan and operate it on meat and you say let's take compiler background chickens and you find a high level what hey what you're classing is a high level um what percentages are you looking at as a high level a in the individual bird but in the flock and then if you do find the eye level what's the processes ongoing there after now the tension and retention of the birds um and just moving forward can and all the implications that that brings but really interesting piece of work yeah thank you I think there are obviously things that things that sort of a pile a pilot need to look at sort of the feasibility of using those Technologies but yeah I understand they definitely need to sort out the sort of implications of positive results and what they actually mean Rick did you want to jump in there was that in response to that question was it a separate one yeah I made candy yeah Mark I mean and this has been one of the challenges and this is why I think you know as Ashley and the the team said you know when when we've been talking to to people you know particularly industry for example they're they're quite keen on the non-statri ones for um and possibly obvious reasons um but I think um and so yeah those are exactly the kind of things that if if you if you got to a stage where you thought this has potential this technology this platform could work you obviously then go into a whole load of kind of legal statutory policy kind of implications how do you implement it so so there's definitely those those things that need to be um need to be considered and all those sort of things that you've talked about there are absolutely valid so so there are lots of work I think um you know as as Ashley said this is very early stage do do these things actually work could you take them into a site out away from lab and actually get them to work so it's yeah well I mean if we're realistic these things are probably years away from you know full deployment even if we get a good run on these things um but but it is very valid and I think you know your point about how we Implement them and how we sort of co-design any new testing regime with people like meat hygiene inspectors is really critical so so absolutely there would be a whole load of work to be done um beyond the feasibility but this has given us an opportunity to check out these Technologies and see you know are they are they feasible basically thanks thanks Rick um I can see David got your hand up again see if we can get past the technical issues hear me yes we can yeah right yeah don't worry about the other question that's been answered lateral flow advice um so yeah thanks it was really interesting overview of those Technologies um quite timely as well I think but one of the things that you mentioned at the towards the end there was like um real-time PCR and norovirus and shellfish um which is a good example uh because it's very that's really going to be really really challenging to do in the field and sorry we've been thinking about for years and I was wondering during your literature review if you come across um got Technologies for uh helping out with the preparation of those samples is one of the key challenges is with norovirus in particular in shellfish is the it's there it's such low levels um that even with a PCR you'll it's really hard to get enough material in the first place to uh to be attacked even with a PCR based method um and then there are other challenges alongside that with that being key if you'd sort of come across anything um well yeah definitely come across the issue of like sample preparation being the biggest hurdle for norovirus testing in shellfish and no I can't say that I've seen it put together with a method that at the moment I would say would be suitable for on-site testing so I think yeah the biggest hurdle with that one would be to get sort of the trl6 level where you've got a suitable sample preparation and DNA extraction combined with the portable real-time PCR so no that's definitely the biggest challenge we identified as well reading the literature that I couldn't see that had been solved yeah okay well it's a shame that you didn't come across anything that could help yeah we'll just keep thinking about it foreign thanks David um flipping back over to the Q a um we've got a couple of questions that have come in from Kirby over at EA I don't know if you want a mutant pose the questions hi Elliot um yeah um the fourth question I have is about the literature review talking about um at the first stage uh so could we elaborate more like you know what criteria or key terminologies you use um for this book um in it I don't know if you can jump in if you know more which the key Search terms were for the literature search yes sorry um yeah so we as Ashley mentioned before we split it in two so we have like a more broad search and a more specific one for football pathogens so from the top of my head I can remember um all of them but uh we for the foodborne pathogen one we have things like food foodborne a point of need in feel um different ones referring to the infinite Diagnostics and then we discard things that we um or yeah we yeah this car thinks that mycotoxins that we weren't looking specifically for or allergens uh um for the more broad one where basically focusing on infill point of need a more broad like um including DNA bacteria for example a virus and I think those were the main ones there might be another ones as well but they right now I can remember oh yeah that was it yeah yeah and since um and another question I have like you know whenever like all the Technologies you're talking about that's in connection with either bacteria virus but can we use them for all other pathogen types apart from this too um I think lots of the Technologies would be transferable across pathogens but I think it would just depend bonds are pretty transferable to all pathogen types and you know depend on the technology I don't know if that answers the question no that's fine that's okay thanks thank you thank you that um there was specific other types you consider in there please do feel free to kind of drop us a message and we can always um follow up and consider and further around the work that's going on um so flipping back over to the questions and answers um so we've got a question a follow-up point I think from Mark um around cost being key about who operate who pays and who operates them is also key so those factors I think that were touched on um so I don't think Market there's anything else to add to that on please feel free to raise your hand um and then we've got Simon Jones um has raised a question I don't know if you want to come off mute and pose a question hi everyone uh I was just thinking with the high initial cost um and obviously going forward I think the cost of the pieces of Kit will come down in time but um if you're looking for a you know a rollout pretty soon and could you foresee a team of um say mhis or ovs going around Plant to plant and doing spec testing or would it be it um as the rim samples are done currently whether so many per month are doing taken in each plant Rick if you want to jump in yet yeah sure it's nice I mean yeah I mean I I think there's um I I think you know um the idea of sort of um I mean people talk about a lab in a lab in a case kind of approach and you could have mobile units that go around and do testing is is totally feasible and I think I think how you deploy the technology is is really up for arms I I'm up for grabs um I think one of the scenarios you might think about is border inspection where we're building as as we speak we are building border inspection points could you create something that is a simple laboratory at those where you have some of this kit and it goes back to some of the earlier questions that were asked about how transferable is this technology you know the team here specifically looked at foodborne pathogens but I've often said this before DNA's DNA so you know DNA from a bee from a tree from you know a human you know it's all DNA and it's the same sort of chemistry if you like the test you design different assays you have to validate them Etc all that kind of stuff but if it's got DNA or RNA you can you can test for it so you could have a couple of platforms maybe one of the real-time PCR platforms maybe a lamp platform that you could run different tests on you could run Animal Health tests on it plant Health tests on it food tests on it so you you could have a sort of like localized laboratory capability at say a border inspection Port I mean I I know for a fact that some of the plant Health colleagues have sort of done this in the past at Heathrow Airport where a huge amount of imports came in there um I think the other thing is everyone talks about cost and there is always that it's the cost of what we currently do and the cost of um the new technology and everyone does that direct comparison and often those costs go up slowly but it's often the benefit that you need to work in so you need to it's it's almost the cost of the outcome that you've you've you've you've um got that's better so have you stopped uh you have you found more things and stopped more contamination you know could be a benefit in which case would you pay slightly more for that um could it also be that actually and again thinking about scenarios here industry would pay for it because they get quicker results so often we think about it in terms of cost as maybe a regulator an inspector but do we then think about the benefit in terms of would industry be happy to pay for a quicker result um and certainly again going back to a previous life and looking at plant Health scenarios you know if you go and put things in storage and leave them there for 48 hours while you get the lab result the value of that commodity has gone down so actually what would an importer pay for a result that they got in 20 or 30 minutes as opposed to when they got in 48 hours so actually the benefit in terms of better regulation and trade might be significant now again who pays for that is going to be one of those big questions down the line but there are various ways of looking at it so so yeah and various options again so yeah lavender case definitely a situation we could look at so foreign lots of great information thank you fantastic thanks Simon and Rick um David I can see you've got your hand back up did you want to come back in on another point right now Rick just covered it thanks okay fantastic thank you so looking over the Q a tab we don't have any other questions that have been flagged there um and give it a few seconds just in case there's anything anybody else wants to raise in that tab or if anyone's got any questions please do feel free to put your hand up as well so oh there we go Mark's just come back in yeah so sorry um this one with this new technology obviously we all need to embrace it and move forward with that um are you expecting to find more with it like can find a bitter you know I'm just thinking of what Rick said there about the cost and the outcome if the outcome is we're finding more contamination more compilable battery then industry are going to back away from this rather than embrace it because I think we all know what industry is like and so I'll could could there be a possibility of being victims of own success here I'll prepare that one up I'm Mark absolutely and and you know there's this old adage in in sort of surveillance and diagnostic terms the more you look the more you find um and the easiest way not to to find anything is to um is to uh is to not look so I suppose um it's a case of knowledge is dangerous so if you have this thing what do you do with it and obviously again that's that massive combination of you know how how do we talk about you know if we say this I mean it's not and again this is another really important point for scientists it's not for us just to find a load of data and then throw it over the fence a load of policy makers and say oh you might want to deal with that um we've got to think about the implications of what we do as well and and and how that might be used um and some of it could be dangerous as well so I think what the team have done and they're looking at some of the scenarios and some of the the situations where it could be used is you know do we look at things where there's a potential benefit from industry in terms of them looking at hygiene where they're doing routine hygiene checks and can they improve their hygiene checks maybe you know looking at I don't know an example listeria in biofilms that build up in in production plants I mean in in food factories you know could they then improve the hygiene which is then an obvious benefit but one where you're you're sort of helping them to help themselves get better rather than maybe plowing straight into a a really tricky statutory situation so there might be other things where we sort of look at the technology in slightly less contentious contexts and situations but then consider how we might then move it we don't just say oh it's too difficult let's not do it and you said that Mike you said we've got to embrace it but it's how we do that and maybe we just need to get people more comfortable with it and and just to say this isn't this isn't just foodborne disease you know we all these arguments were played out during covert as well you know everyone was used to the idea that people were sick you got a test done in a lab and the epidemiologists got all the information so how do you then deal with that when you're sending tests to people in their homes and they get tests and how do you deal with them individuals having the power of that knowledge Etc so it gets a lot of social science in it as well which is why Barbara and the team have been doing a bit of that kind of work as well so if it's it's a it's a really it's a fascinating it's a fascinating challenge but it's a really good opportunity yeah but lots to do thanks Rick um I can see Simon's just come in with a follow-up question do you want to raise that Simon hi uh yeah just looking at um when when you would like to see this technology put out into um into plants um but I presume that's where it would be going or is there too many variant factors for you to give a time frame uh yeah too many I I think it's too early to say that and and I'm I'm and in terms of plant time and I'm not necessarily sure that would be the first point of call I mean it it depends if it would fit within existing workflows for example um which you know for some of the conversations I've had with mhis it doesn't necessarily I mean if you're not doing routine testing at the moment um then you know there's not a direct replacement so it would be on top however what um what you might see are scenarios for example Imports so at the moment we with there is always almost almost an element of there was already an element of routine testing for certain things like salmonella so maybe you're replacing something you already we're not replacing but considering whether you could do something different from what you already do so I think I think your idea with meat hygiene and inspection and plants is is one thing to consider but I reckon that would be further down the line so um but uh but given the complexity of it it's good to start the conversation nice and early I reckon so thank you cheers thanks both um Mark just put to comment in as well just around it'd be great to be kept up to date with progress in this area so yeah we definitely will um kind of links back to that that pinned q a that I've put in there and and kind of looped back around so that we've got the website we've got a series of webinars we've got a newsletter um if questions come up after this we're more than happy to be approached so we've got the path safe at food.gov dot UK um we're here we won't be disappearing to yet we'll be sharing that information the program is as a whole is due to report out um around March 2024 and we'll have to keep updates going in between but that's a kind of Target end date for the program and we'll be doing a lot of um Communications around that as we we near the end of the program um so unless there's any other immediate questions I can't see any more coming up in the chat um can't see any of the hands raised as I said please feel free to reach out to us if something comes to mind later um so to thank everybody thank the presenters for a wonderful presentation everybody for attending and I've done the reminder plug around all of our newsletters and contacts and also the next in the series of this webinar um series will be on Thursday the 13th of July um running from 11 till 12 and looking at the first steps towards an environmental surveillance system for antimicrobial resistance in England so please do join us for that session if you can and with that wish you all a very good day and thank you for attending thanks everyone thank you great session thank you thank you thank you that was really interesting thank you have a good day thanks everybody have a good day thank you thank you

2023-07-16 01:32

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