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Description
Some STEC are priority zoonotic pathogens that place a significant burden on Scottish health services, for example: the 2024 O145 outbreak and increasing human clinical non-O157 STEC cases. To augment existing knowledge about livestock reservoirs in Scotland, we’ve investigated STEC occurrence in Scottish sheep, farmed deer, and dairy cattle. We’ve contributed information to Food Standards Scotland (FSS) and Public Health Scotland’s Incident Management Teams, increased the scope of the NHS SERLs Scottish STEC genome database, and generated information that will assist FSS’s Strategy (2021-2026); to identify the main food safety risks to consumers from foodborne illness. We are investigating methods to rapidly identify non-O157 STEC in samples and have established a collaborative relationship with the Animal and Plant Health Agency’s STEC team, with whom we are discussing the development of quality assurance testing for STEC-diagnostics in British laboratories.