Food safety violations at the consumer stage are common and nearly 40% of food-borne outbreaks are occurring in the domestic setting. The overall goal of SafeConsumE is to provide effective, science-based and sustainable strategies for food authorities, market actors and the research community to help consumers mitigate risk, thus reducing the health burden from food-borne illness in Europe. SafeconsumE will suggest, develop and evaluate: 1) Tools, technologies and products (e.g. sensors, apps, hygiene concepts, kitchen utensils) that stimulate safe practices; 2) Communication strategies that effectively stimulate adoption and market uptake of safer practices and tools/technologies; 3) Education programs increasing skills and knowledge aiding teenagers to handle food safely; 4) Dynamic, sustainable and inclusive policy models that stimulates and support national and EU level initiatives. To achieve high implementation and innovation power, scientists will work together with consumers, authorities and different market actors under a new trans-disciplinary and multi-actor approach based on Theories of Practices combined with Design-driven innovation. Covering the five most important hazards causing food borne disease, consumer behavior across Europe will be described using a risk-based methodology and utilizing the strengths of high-throughput surveys together with in-depth qualitative methodology. New strategies will be developed taking into account their impact on risk reduction, documented consumer barriers for change and sustainability. SafeConsumE will support transformation towards a more healthy population and cost-efficacy by reduced foodborne illness, and a more sustainable community by less food-waste and environmentally friendly solutions.

The Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic in West Africa is not under control. This proposal has immediate, mid-term and long-term objectives to combat the current and future EVD epidemics. Objectives with immediate impact are: (i) Providing key information needed to implement efficient convalescent plasma treatment and a toolkit to determine the suitability of plasma for treatment; (ii) Providing key information needed to estimate the efficacy of experimental vaccines, including correlates of protection at T cell level; (iii) Improving supportive treatment of patients and reducing hospital case fatality rate by providing information on biomarkers and relevant co-infections; (iv) Monitoring development of mutations in Ebola virus (EBOV) genomes during the epidemic and enhancing our preparedness to determine the relevance of these changes in experimental systems; and (v) Protecting health care workers and communities by providing information on virus shedding in body fluids and estimation of infectiousness in various stages of EVD. Objectives with mid to long-term impact are: (i) Provide information on pathophysiological changes and immunological determinants to infer new immunotherapeutic strategies for treatment of EVD; and (ii) Strengthening cooperation of biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) facilities and building a pan-European research area in the field of highly pathogenic viruses as envisaged in the ‘European Research Infrastructure on Highly Pathogenic Agents’ project. The concept of EVIDENT is to scientifically exploit specimens collected from EVD patients during outbreak response and field research. We will use state-of-the-art methodologies within the EU BSL-4 facilities to gather new and outbreak-relevant knowledge on B and T cell immunology, biomarkers, virus evolution, virulence determinants, and transmission of EBOV. The consortium contributes to the outbreak response since March 2014 and is competent to implement a project in the outbreak area.