Thursday, 09 December 2021
EU annual One Health zoonosis report published
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) today published the EU annual One Health zoonosis report which found that there was a drop in reported zoonotic diseases in humans and foodborne outbreaks in 2020. Some of the key findings are as follows:
- Campylobacteriosis was the most reported zoonosis in the EU in 2020, with 120,946 cases compared to more than 220,000 the previous year. It was followed by salmonellosis, which affected 52,702 people compared to 88,000 in 2019. The number of reported foodborne outbreaks also fell by 47%.
- In Ireland, 2,419 cases of campylobacteriosis were reported compared to 2,776 in 2019 and 214 cases of salmonellosis compared to 347 in 2019.
- Experts acknowledged the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe in the remarkable drop in reported zoonotic diseases in humans and foodborne outbreaks. Possible factors behind the large decrease in cases include changes in health seeking behaviour, restrictions on travel and on events, the closing of restaurants, quarantine, lockdown, and other mitigation measures such as the use of masks, physical distancing and hand sanitisation.
In addition, EFSA has published two interactive communication tools on foodborne outbreaks - a story map which provides general information on foodborne outbreaks, their causative agents and implicated food vehicles and a dashboard which allows people to search and query the data on foodborne outbreaks collected since 2015.
European Food Safety Authority One Health Report
