Research

The white paper summarizes all historical data on C. difficile infections in humans; evaluates epidemiological data on animals, non-animal sources, and foods that have the potential to cause human infections and factors that affect transmission of C. difficile; evaluates hospital acquired C. difficile infections; evaluates worldwide understanding of C. difficile infections and their sources; and identifies the data gaps and discusses how these gaps influence the understanding of C. difficile and proposes tasks needed to close the gaps.

This white paper defined multi-drug resistance as related to different bacterial pathogens; discusses sources of multi-drug resistance and how resistance genes are transmitted among different strains and different species of bacteria; identifies multi-drug resistant bacteria associated with different foods and food production animals; evaluates efficacy of interventions to prevent development of multidrug resistance and to prevent contamination of foods with multidrug resistant pathogens; and recommends risk mitigation strategies in a preventive food safety process management system.

This white paper summarized data on Campylobacter as a cause of human and animal infections; discussed sources associated with illnesses; detailed surveillance studies of prevalence on meat, foods and in animals; evaluated worldwide understanding of Campylobacter infections and their sources; assessed effectiveness of existing interventions and detection methods; and defined knowledge gaps.