Meet us in St. Louis! – International Association of Food Protection

As Senior R&D Manager for molecular food safety at Thermo Fisher Scientific, I am really looking forward to the International Association of Food Protection (IAFP) meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, (Jul 31, 2016 – Aug 03, 2016, America’s Center). The annual IAFP meeting is the place to be for people working in food manufacturing and food safety, and a great opportunity to meet with colleagues, customers and collaborators to discuss new technologies, methods and trends in food safety.

I am based in Finland and oversee a food safety R&D team in Finland and the U.S. One of the greatest benefits of working at Thermo Fisher Scientific is the wide range of technologies we have at our disposal in every day work. My team’s main focus to date has been on Real-Time PCR, such as the Thermo Scientific™ SureTect™ Real-Time PCR based product range for food safety, and the Applied Biosystems™ MicroSEQ™ range. Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) is one of the most fascinating technologies my team is working with for food safety and quality applications. My colleagues Amanda Manolis (Product Manager – Molecular Solutions) and Sohaib Qureshi (Product Manager – Next Generation Sequencing) are participating and presenting in the Next Generation Sequencing Workshop on Saturday 30^th July. It’s a full day tutorial and hands-on workshop to help understand this emerging technology; it will be a great opportunity to pick their brains.

This is my third IAFP meeting. I´ve been to dozens of cities in U.S. but this is the first visit to St. Louis. It´s going to be a busy week for me, as I´ll be presenting a poster titled “Evaluation of Molecular Salmonella spp., Salmonella Enteritidis and Salmonella Typhimurium Assay Performance in Poultry Meat Samples” at the poster session on Monday August 1^st at 10-11:30 am and 5-6 pm, (poster board 116). In addition, I´ll give a brief talk about a new Thermo Scientific™ TaqMan™ Salmonella multiplex assay for the detection of Salmonella spp., Salmonella Enteritidis and Salmonella Typhimurium in poultry and pork meat samples at our booth (#527) on Monday August 1^st at 10 am, and at the same time again on Tuesday August 2^nd.

Each year, approximately one million people fall ill from eating or handling food contaminated with Salmonella¹ and S.Typhimurium and S.Enteritidis serovars are the strains most frequently associated with human illness² . Poultry and pork producers globally are required to monitor the prevalence of pathogenic Salmonella serovars; S.Typhimurium and S.Enteritidis. The evaluation we are presenting demonstrates how a triplex assay can enable producers to quickly and accurately detect these strains in a single reaction.

If you’re attending, then come and have a chat with one of our friendly team at booth 527 or join one of our on-booth presentations. We’d love to show you how our latest solutions could help you streamline your lab workflow or take your PCR testing to the next level.

I should have some time to explore the city a little bit on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Unfortunately NHL ice hockey season is not on as I would have loved the opportunity to see the Blues playing. Ice hockey is a big thing in Finland!

Looking forward to see you there!

References

1.Scallan E, Hoekstra RM, Angulo FJ, Tauxe RV, Widdowson M-A, Roy SL, et al. (2011) Foodborne illness acquired in the United States—major pathogens. Emerging Infectious Diseases. 2011 Jan. 2.Hugas M., Beloeil P. A. (2014). Controling Salmonella along the food chain in the European Union – progress over the last ten years. Eurosurveillance. 19 (19): pii=20804.