Editorial: Biological Hazards in Food

Food safety is one of the main objectives related to public health protection. It is expected to prevent, minimize or eliminate risks on different stages of the food chain and in the meantime maintain, provide, and distribute high-quality food to meet consumer demands. However, millions of cases of food-borne diseases occur every year worldwide (Martinović et al., 2016). Their global impact on health and food quality assurance is well-known even if the full health effects, the kinds of unsafe food, and the economic costs are often undervalued or miscalculated, as well as the outbreaks of food-borne diseases are often unrecognized, unreported, or not investigated. The globalization can lead to a widespread distribution of foods with the introduction of new pathogens strictly associated to a specific geographical area. Nowadays foods travel long distances to be consumed worldwide but only in developed countries consumers are aware of potential presence of food-borne pathogens and surveillance and analytical methods for their detection are really effective, while in developing countries the agents and sources of food-borne diseases are mostly unknown (Wang et al., 2016). In addition, the growing number of emerging pathogens, changes of virulence of known pathogens and appearance of antibiotic resistance has potentially exposed consumers to a major risk of illness and on the other hand food industry has been required to improve the strategies to struggle of these threats. Food-borne diseases can be caused consuming food or water contaminated by pathogenic microorganisms such as bacteria and their toxins, fungi, viruses, and parasites. Food can be contaminated both at the source as raw material, and during food processing up to storage and distribution. Also people (infected persons or carriers of pathogens) and the environment (food contact surfaces and facilities) can spread microorganisms on raw or processed food.