Flexible screening and monitoring of animal populations with special consideration of microbial contamination

Animal health monitoring is important in conventional animal production to prevent the spread of pathogens within the food chain. For both animal welfare and consumer safety, appropriate monitoring throughout the production chain is necessary to ensure safe consumption.

The goal of the FlexScreen project was to optimize the meat processing chain from the base of animal husbandry (sow farmers, fatteners) to the end product (slaughterhouse), in order to improve animal health and food safety primarily through enhanced information flow. The main focus was on two aspects:

1. Development of a flexible and cost-efficient on-site rapid test system for the detection of potential, food-relevant zoonotic pathogens: Campylobacter, Salmonella, and Yersinia.

2. Integration of collected findings with additional data, such as information from fattening operations, risk-based meat inspections, and food chain data (particularly antibiotic use in livestock), into a monitoring model (FlexScreen tool). This tool provides all stakeholders involved in the process (farmers, fatteners, veterinarians, and QA staff at the slaughterhouse) with actionable information.

Through this optimized data management, problems can be addressed at the source (feeding, housing, ventilation, cleaning), thereby improving the quality of the end product. Once problems are identified and addressed, the resulting improvements can also be quantified. Additionally, the FlexScreen tool is intended for preventive use in herd inspections to identify and mitigate potential pathogen entry into livestock or the final product at an early stage.

Within the framework of the collaborative project, the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME) in Aachen, together with Quh-Lab Lebensmittelsicherheit, was responsible for developing and testing the innovative rapid test method for simple and cost-effective on-site detection of relevant zoonotic pathogens. The FlexScreen tool was implemented by the consortium partner ChainPoint GmbH with support from the University of Applied Sciences South Westphalia.