Nicolas Eterradossi appointed Director of the Ploufragan-Plouzané Laboratory
On 5 February 2018, Nicolas Eterradossi was appointed Director of the Ploufragan-Plouzané Laboratory. Nicolas Eterradossi is a veterinary doctor, holder of a university doctorate in microbiology from the Institut Supérieur des Productions Animales (Higher Institute for Livestock - ENSA Rennes) and of a molecular virology diploma from the Institut Pasteur in Paris. For the past 30 years he has contributed to research at the Ploufragan-Plouzané Laboratory devoted to animal health, and poultry health in particular, within the CNEVA, AFSSA, and now ANSES.
After having worked within the Food Hygiene and Avian Epidemiology units on the bacteria and farming conditions responsible for skin infections in broilers, in 1989 Nicolas Eterradossi joined the Virology, Immunology and Parasitology in Poultry & Rabbits (VIPAC) unit to work on ways of improving the diagnosis and prevention of viral diseases in poultry.
Beginning with infectious bursitis disease and avian metapneumoviruses, two areas for which the laboratory was recognised as a reference laboratory by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in 1998 and 2007, he then devoted his work to the viruses responsible for enteritis in turkeys, and to avian influenza viruses. The results obtained have been exploited in nearly 300 publications, conference papers and book chapters, including more than seventy international publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Nicolas Eterradossi has been Assistant Director of the Ploufragan Laboratory for the poultry and rabbit sectors (from 2001 to 2010), and Deputy Director of the Ploufragan-Plouzané Laboratory. He was deputy head of the VIPAC unit from 2001, then head of this unit from 2015. He currently coordinates work on avian and rabbit virology and avian parasitology at the Ploufragan-Plouzané Laboratory.
Nicolas Eterradossi was a member of AFSSA's very first Expert Committee on Animal Health. He is also Vice-President of the World Veterinary Poultry Association (more than 1500 members in 46 countries) for which he has chaired the French branch since 2001, and was in 2007 one of the six European veterinary founders of the European College of Poultry Veterinary Sciences.
In his new role as Laboratory Director, Nicolas Eterradossi takes over from Gilles Salvat. He will implement ANSES's main scientific and organisational policy orientations at the laboratory, and coordinate and develop the activities (ensuring recognition at local, regional, national and international level) of nearly 200 staff working in eight research and reference units and two experimental departments located at three separate sites, that strive to promote health and safety in the poultry, rabbit, swine and fish farming sectors.