Report of the Scientific Committee of the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) on viral contamination of food, pa y - ing special attention to bivalve molluscs and control methods

The viruses primarily associated with food-borne illness are human Norovirus (NoV), causing gastroenteritis, and Hepatitis A virus (HAV) causing acute hepatitis. These viruses do not grow, or grow with many difficulties, in vitro and thus their detection in food matrices relies on molecular techniques. The major foodstuffs involved in food-borne viral infections are bivalve molluscs, salad vege tables and berries. Standardization of molecular methods is necessary before their adoption within regulatory frameworks and their routinely implementation in food analysis. A European standardization working group (CEN/TC 275/WG6/TAG4-viruses in foods) has developed standard methods for virus detection in foodstuffs. Quantitative determination of viruses in food would allow the assessment of the associated health risk after consumption of bivalves with a given number of virus genome copies since higher number of genome copies correlate with higher risk of infection.