Pros and Cons of Methods of Detection for Viruses in Foods

Enteric viruses, particularly human noroviruses (NoV), are the most common cause of foodborne disease and a significant contributor to global disease burden. Viruses enter the food supply across the farm-to-fork chain by exposure to contaminated waters, surfaces, and/or human hands. Unlike bacterial pathogens, for which there are widely used validated detection technologies, virus detection methods are less developed. There are many reasons for this, which, when taken together, necessitate processing food or analyzing environmental samples for virus concentration and purification prior to application of detection methods. These detection methods can be cumbersome, expensive, inefficient, and fraught with complications, including the inability to discriminate infectious from non-infectious viruses. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss the outcomes arising from the ILSI expert working group's recent work; recent advances in viral detection for human NoV, Hepatitis A, and emerging viruses, such as Hepatitis E; the pros and cons of various detection methods and their applicability to foods and environmental samples; and recent developments in food virology arena and how these methods can be used to address real-world issues.