At present there are no pan-European requirements to monitor for V. parahaemolyticus in either harvesting areas or ready-to-eat seafood, nor are there formal epidemiological surveillance systems. The absence of EU-wide legislative controls is largely due to the widely acknowledged lack of suitable methods that allow differentiation of the pathogenic strains of the bacterium from those that are not considered a human health risk. This however, has not prevented several European countries introducing unilateral controls for imported products. In such cases the use of inappropriate test methods can potentially lead to a significant number of border rejections of imported seafood that may not constitute a public health risk. Consequently, the main aim of the SEABAC project was to establish suitable methods based upon novel molecular technologies that will enable the prevalence of pathogenic strains in European seafood to be established and as a result estimate the real risk for seafood consumers. The SEABAC project includes six partners from research institutes and universities in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Iceland, France and the U.K.
