The Institute has been awarded a project on food safety and animal welfare

Within the framework of targeted research projects founded by the Italian Ministery of Health, the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’Abruzzo e del Molise “G. Caporale” (IZSAM) awarded a “Young Researcher” (“Giovani Ricercatori”) project with a reference value of € 387.000,00.

Among the bodies, which submitted proposals, there were the Experimental Zooprophylactic Institutes, the hospitals and the research centers in human medicine throughout Italy. As the Ministry reported, the project evaluation was very strict and foresaw a scientific review, which involved around 800 scientists. The panel of judges was composed of scientist from the NIH - Centre for Scientific Review, the Italian Scientist and Scholars of North America Foundation (ISSNAF) and of five committees named “study session” constituted by Italian researcher, who have been resident abroad for more than ten years. Out of a total of 3.353 submitted projects, only 10% were financed.

The IZSAM project, entitled “Farm animal welfare and food safety: effect of on‐farm and pre‐slaughtering stress factors on microbiological contamination of poultry meat”, lasts three years and aims to identify and evaluate the pre‐slaughtering stress factors on microbiological contamination of poultry meat and to furthermore develop management systems, which will be able to reduce their effect.

The project team is multidisciplinary and composed of only young IZSAM researchers (under 40). The project leader is Luigi Iannetti of the Department of hygiene in food and animal feed technology and the other team members are Stefano Messori of the Laboratory human-animal relationship and animal welfare, Giuseppe Aprea of the Department of food and animal feed technology, Giuliano Garofolo Department of bacteriology and hygiene in the production of milk and dairy products and Alessio Di Lorenzo of the Department of Statistics and GIS.