Silvia Viegas

INSA
Lisboa Portugal

Biographical Sketch: Coordinator of microbiological area of the Monitoring and Surveillance Unit of Food and Nutrition Department at the Portuguese National Institute of Health in Lisbon since 2008. She got her degree on Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Lisbon in 1982, the Clinical Analysis Specialist degree and the Health Graduated Technician Specialist degree in 2001. Professional activities: 1)Health scientist at Food/Water Microbiological, Analysis Laboratory (1990-1991) 2)Coordinator of “Salmonella National Reference Laboratory” and “Campylobacter National Reference Laboratory” (1991- 2007) with notification of Portuguese Salmonella data to SALM_NET project in Central Public Health Laboratory 3)Portuguese representative participant of DATA COLLECTION TEST in the EFSA- project “CFP/EFSA/DATEX/2007/02” to test Food code of Portuguese lead data from some food groups with BVL system, to study the comparability between the EFSA data collection system and BVL system. Her current main scientific areas of work are Food Contamination Data compilation and Risk Assessment. In 2011 she represented the Portuguese Focal Point in the Meeting of the Task Force on Zoonoses Data Collection on Foodborne Outbreaks-Parma, she studied the usefulness of LanguaL (Langua aLimentaria) description-classification system to microbiological risk-benefits assessment, regarding possibility of linking different food data banks. She is responsible for building a Portuguese Food Microbiological Information Network integrated in PortFIR (Portuguese Food Information Resource). She published in 2010 a book entitled” “Diet related health changes – microbiological contamination of foods”. She has organized seminars to sensitize all food chain stakeholders, school educators and public health professionals, to the importance of sharing information essential to risk assessment. From de beginning of 2014 she is responsible for preparing a quarterly newsletter with epidemiologic and microbiological information from the foodborne investigations analysed in the INSA laboratories, following EFSA methodologies for reporting food-borne outbreaks.

Papers:
P1-09 Educational Instruments for Food Safety and Nutrition