Food safety issue is a real concern for food business operators as consequences of outbreaks can be drastic. To face them, these operators need to have highly decisive tools for surveillance, technical intervention and investigation of pathogens. With the recent development of genomics tools, microbial hazards surveillance is entering a new and exciting age, the age of Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS).
The main goals of UMT ACTIA ASIICS, based at Maisons-Alfort, are:

• To develop and make available the procedures for processing the WGS data for the following food microbial hazards Salmonella enterica and Listeria monocytogenes.
• To maximize use of WGS genetic data in order to : i/ define appropriate tags to improve prevention and investigation of safety issues, ii/ generalize and improve microbial hazards surveillance by the means of shared database between food business operators and public surveillance organisms.

Develop and make available the procedures of WGS genomic data of microbial hazards, from shared data bases :

• Develop and organize the tools for processing WGS genetic data and associated data (i,e epidemiological data).
• Sequence by WGS a consequent collections of strains of Salmonella spp and L. monocytogenes isolated by Anses and by the 2 technical institutes (ACTALIA and Ifip).
• Build the databases shared by Anses and the technical institutes.

Test out the WGS analytical tools for the investigation and intervention by confronting the developed analytical tools in 2 real epidemiological cases, one in the dairy sector and the other in the pig production sector, in order to :

• Study the genetic profile of endemic strains.
• Investigate their spreading.
• Define appropriate genetics tags for a fast and specific detection of strains considered as the most dangerous.