Relevance of microbial finished product testing in food safety management

Relevance of microbial finished product testing in food safety management

Management of microbiological food safety is largely based on good design of processes, products and procedures. Finished product testing may be considered as a control measure at the end of the production process. However, testing gives only very limited information on the safety status of a food. If a hazardous organism is found it means something, but absence in a limited number of samples i...

Microbial food safety risk assessment

Food for thought ... On food safety testing.

More than any other consumer product range, food represents an emotional issue with a strong cultural dimension. In a eurobarometer survey of 2002, 89% of the europeans interviewed considered food safety to be very important; interestingly 80% considered animal welfare to be very important in the same survey. Food also has an enormous economic impact on society, with the european food and drink...

Equivalence in Food Safety Management

Food safety has long been recognised as a mandatory requirement in the production and marketing of foods. Traditional approaches to food safety management have relied upon end product sampling and laboratory testing. Detailed procedures were developed to set specifications for foods in regard to chemical and microbiological levels, and also levels of physical contamination. Such specifications ...

Microbial bioinformatics for food safety and production

In the production of fermented foods, microbes play an important role. Optimization of fermentation processes or starter culture production traditionally was a trial-and-error approach inspired by expert knowledge of the fermentation process. Current developments in high-throughput 'omics' technologies allow developing more rational approaches to improve fermentation processes both from the foo...