World meat industry news

On April 14 the Russian State Center for Animal Feed and Drug Standardization and Quality (FGBU “VGNKI”) held a seminar “Rules of collecting surface samples from food packages to detect pathogens of COVID-19 – coronavirus SARS-CoV-2” in the format of a video conference.

Since it is necessary to guarantee safety of consignments exported from Russia, specifically to China, the VGNKI scientists have developed and approved a method of detection of COVID-19 pathogens that enables to detect two genes of SARS-CoV-2 at once.

This method meets the requirements of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and ensures testing aimed to confirm food safety.

For the purpose of COVID-19 pathogens determination in environmental samples, namely on external and internal surfaces of food packages, containers and products themselves, including those intended for export, the VGNKI experts have elaborated methodological recommendations of swabbing.

These recommendations define a number of samples to be taken from the total volume of a consignment under assessment. Besides, these methodological recommendations make provisions for possible collection of aggregate samples.

Swabbing shall be conducted by authorized specialists of Rosselkhoznadzor for whom the training program was actually developed and tailored. Accordingly, the following aspects were covered at the seminar by Head of Biotechnologies Department, FGBU “VGNKI”, Candidate of Veterinary Medicine Olga Ivanova:

• Normative references related to collection of surface samples
• Conditions to be met at the time of sampling, and safety requirements
• Sampling procedure
• Decision on sampling volume that depends on the batch size
• Packaging, marking (labelling) and transportation
• Issuing sampling protocol
• Apart from that, a sampling procedure was demonstrated on the video.

Upon completion of the course, all the participants took a test and, depending on the results, received their training certificates.