Engaging northern communities in the monitoring of country food safety and wildlife health

Traditional country foods are an integral part of Inuit life, providing nutritional, emotional, social and spiritual benefits. Despite these benefits, animal-based country foods may pose risk to human health. This project investigated zoonoses (diseases passed between animals and humans) in northern country foods. Due to the different food sources and methods of food preparation, food safety concerns differ throughout the Canadian Arctic. The involvement of northern communities in our research is essential to get on-the-ground information to understand wildlife and disease ecology, and potential public health risks from the consumption of food from wildlife. Our goals were five-fold: (1) Establish the prevalence and distribution of Trichinella sp, Toxoplasma gondii, Anisakidae worms, E.coli 0157:H7 and Salmonella sp in wildlife of food safety concern, (2) set-up laboratory facilities in Nunavik, NWT and Nunatsiavut, Labrador, (3) train local people for wildlife sampling and diagnosis of the five diseases of interest, (4) develop/refine/validate simplified (field) diagnostic tests for Toxoplasma, E. coli O157:H7 and Salmonella, and (5) develop a Canadian web-based database of Arctic wildlife diseases that can be accessed by all northerners.