I have been working with intervention of zoonotic agents in the meat chain since 1981. Intervention at herd level and in the abattoir also involving risk-based meat inspection are my research interests. I have been working as a professor at the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science and The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Copenhagen, Denmark, and as a research director at Animalia (The Norwegian Meat Research Centre). My most important research is involving ways of detecting Yersinia enterocolitica, the epidemiology and how to control this bacterium in the meat chain.

I am one of the training school organizers, and as the vice-leader of RIBMINS Working Group 2, Farm Level, dealing with controls and risk categorization. I will present the lecture “Pre-harvest food safety interventions (proven efficacy apart from Randomised Controlled Trials)”. These are interventions that work at farm level in practice!

My message to the participants is that intervention at herd level is one of the key elements for a sustainable and “clean” animal production also solving some general problems such as recycling of Salmonella and other zoonotic agents in the environment.