Surveillance and monitoring

The National Food Institute continuously monitors food safety in the Danish market and develops surveillance and monitoring systems and programmes for areas that require risk and health evaluations or control measures.

Monitoring and surveillance relates to the collecting, storing, sorting and analysing of research-based data, communicating the data analyses and developing data systems in areas where the authorities have administrative goals and requirements.

The Danish Zoonosis Centre under the National Food Institute collects and analyses, e.g., data on zoonoses, prepares annual accounts concerning the sources of salmonella infections and carries out statistical and epidemiological data processing. The Annual Report on zoonoses in Denmark features the surveillance results of the past year.

Denmark has a national, integrated surveillance programme, DANMAP, which each year accounts for the development in antimicrobial agent consumption and the incidence of resistant bacteria in Denmark. The results are published in an annual DANMAP report. The DANMAP programme is a joint initiative of the National Food Institute, Statens Serum Institut, the National Veterinary Institute and the Danish Medicines Agency.

The National Food Institute is behind the national surveys on dietary habits, which map the diet, physical activity and overweight of the Danish population as well as their determinants.

The Institute’s monitoring and surveillance activities include assisting the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration with its pesticide control, and monitoring pesticide residues in fruit, vegetables, grain, processed products and meat.