Grant: Canada Research Chairs

The World Health organization estimates that foodborne pathogens cause 600 million illnesses and 420,000 deaths globally each year. One third of the deaths are in children under 5 years of age. In Canada, consumption of contaminated food causes 4 million illnesses, 14,150 hospitalizations and 323 deaths each year. Improvements to global food safety must address the main underlying causes of foodborne illness through improvements in food production facilitated by increased understanding of the biology of foodborne pathogens, and approaches to identify foodborne outbreaks more quickly. Effective solutions to reduce the production of contaminated food, and also to understand how microbial pathogens cause illness through foodborne outbreaks, require a coordinated One Health approach that aims to reduce and/or eliminate foodborne disease. This multifaceted research program will begin with studies aimed at characterizing the mechanisms by which antibiotic resistant genes are spread among foodborne bacteria. Antibiotic resistant foodborne pathogens are a major cause of multidrug resistant diseases that are expected to cause 10 million deaths each year by 2050, and by 2030 antimicrobial resistance could force up to 24 million people into extreme poverty. Next, similar mechanisms employed by different foodborne pathogens to cause humans illness will be identified, using newly designed models of disease where appropriate. This work will lead to novel approaches to control the presence of foodborne pathogens in foods as well as in their animal hosts. Finally, when foodborne outbreaks occur, breakdowns within the current surveillance system mean that public health officials are not alerted to an outbreak for an average of 3-4 weeks post-exposure, allowing contaminated food to remain in circulation and increasing the numbers of people becoming ill. This shortcoming will be addressed by developing active surveillance systems that identify not only the causative pathogen, but also those who are sickened. Results from this program will be shared with federal and provincial agencies tasked with producing safe food and enhancing public health, and with food industry stakeholders. The goals are to improve existing food production methods, improve foodborne disease surveillance, and ultimately, improve the wellbeing and safety of Canadians.