Programme affiliate profiles
Speaker
Patrick Wall
University College Dublin
Short biography
Patrick Wall is Professor of Public Health in University College Dublin, Ireland. He is a medical doctor and veterinarian. He was head of Foodborne Disease Surveillance Division in the UK CDC; he was the first CEO of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and the second Chairperson of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). He was a member of the oversight food safety committee for the Beijing Olympic games. He is a member of the international scientific advisory committee of the Chinese National Centre for Food Safety and Risk Assessment and a member of the Saudi Arabia Food and Drug Authority’s International Risk Assessment Advisory Committee.
His research interests include One Health, Food Safety, Lifestyle Related Disease and engaging with consumers to change behavior.
He is an external member of the Food Safety Advisory Committee, and also the Antibiotic Stewardship Committee, for Moy Park, one of Europe’s leading poultry suppliers. He is the external auditor for the Irish Ministry of Agriculture’s one health programs and is the chair of the Ireland’s national Campylobacter steering group consisting of integrators, retailers and regulators.
Speaker
21/06 - 14:00
Visit the agendaTitle of talk
One Health as integrative approach. No more walls: why we must go forward together
21/06 - 16:05
Abstract of talk
As food security becomes a major issue globally, it behoves us to look at our food production systems to ensure that they are resilient and able to respond to and cope with ecological, climatic and geopolitical challenges, and threats to public health. One Health has truly come of age, as human health cannot be looked at in insolation from animal and environmental health. The EU Green deal flags many areas that need to be addressed and will require interinstitutional and interdisciplinary work if its lofty ambitions are to be realised. No country can afford to be complacent, since the health of one country’s citizens often depends on the activities in another. The need for all stakeholders to share universal standards and risk assessment and management strategies and integrated surveillance and early warning systems is paramount. The health of the environment, where food is produced, underpins entire food safety systems so we require more holistic risk assessment and management strategies. For many zoonotic food-borne diseases and chemical contaminants, the focus of controls is often close to the point of sale to the consumer where interventions and controls earlier in the food chain will deliver greater benefits in terms of feed and food safety. Many of our most disruptive food safety incidents over the past decades have had their origins in contaminated animal feed. An estimated 60% of known infectious diseases and up to 75% of new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin and many of these are transmitted to humans via contaminated food or water.
There has been a revolution in next generation sequencing, metagenomics and bioinformatics. Moreover, we now have far greater capabilities to monitor the emergence and evolution of microbes, better understand webs of transmission and achieve more accurate source attribution. Forensic microbiology is complimenting epidemiological investigation and adopting a One Health approach is demonstrating the utility of agencies and disciplines working together.
Addressing the threats at the animal-human-environment interface requires interagency coordination and collaboration. Ensuring access to safe, sufficient, and nutritious food has to be high on the agenda of all policy makers. Unsafe food undermines food and nutritional security, human development and the health and stability of economies.