[Spread of zoonotic agents by foods of animal origin]

Due to the expansion of the international trade with food, there is a great and increasing danger of transmitting zoonotic agents with these foods over long distances from one region to another. However, in concrete cases it is difficult to determine which zoonotic agents are transmitted through which foodstuffs and how great the emergency is. The worldwide distribution of most of these agents, the easing up of import controls for goods coming from certain export countries, and the abstinence from evaluating epidemiological data in cases of detection of agents in foods are responsible for this. Merely, the transmission path of Vibrio spp. (V. cholerae, V. parahaemolyticus, V. vulnificus) can be significantly traced from the East Asian countries to Europe via fish products.