A Better Training for Safer Food workshop on control and eradication of salmonella in poultry and pigs takes place in Berlin on 15-19 February. About 40 staff members of national competent authorities will attend, mainly from EU Member States and candidate countries.

The training should contribute to further harmonising monitoring and risk assessment of salmonella across the EU. This will in turn facilitate improved control and eradication of the disease leading to increased intra-community trade of live animals, eggs, egg products and poultry meat.

The training is provided by a team of ten international experts from five different EU member States. It includes presentations, panel discussions and case studies.

An introduction is provided to salmonella and food-borne diseases and this is followed by work on harmonised monitoring of such diseases. The workshop also looks at risk analysis, assessment and management and the public health impact of salmonella in the EU.

A further subject is implementation of EU control and eradication requirements and case studies focus on developing control programmes. The workshop concludes with presentation and discussion of the findings of the studies and participants can give feedback on the training through evaluation forms.

This is the first of five workshops on control and eradication of salmonella due to take place in 2010. It forms part of the same programme as training related to implementation of microbiological criteria and investigation of food-borne outbreaks on which five workshops have already been held.