Epidemiology, Detection, and Control of Foodborne Microbial Pathogens

Copyright © 2015 Miguel Prieto et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Foodborne microbial diseases are a significant public health threat. They occur in both developed and developing countries with different food industry expansion, food safety regulations , food hygiene and consumption habits, and climate and environmental situations. The subsequent economic burden associated to them is also different. Most foodborne diseases are sporadic and often not reported, but sometimes foodborne outbreaks may affect a large number of individuals and compromise economic sectors and sanitary resources. Contamination of foods can occur at any point along the food chain, while pathogenic microorganisms enter the body through the ingestion of contaminated food. A series of pathogens and diseases are emerging, driven by factors such as the change in pre-and postharvest stages of food production and manufacturing, pathogen adaptation and evolution, and changes in lifestyle, consumption habits, or host susceptibility, which modify the global exposure to foodborne pathogens. Other factors contemplated as possible contributors to the increased incidence include the recent changes in the food supply system, which result in intensive production and complexity of the supply chain. Because food production, manufacturing, and marketing are global, infectious agents present in foods can be disseminated from the original point of processing and packaging to the place of consumption thousands of kilometers away. Travel and expansion in international trade of foods have also increased the occurrence of outbreaks involving several countries and of cross-border transmission of agents and diseases. There are a number of recent advances in the epidemiology , detection, and control of foodborne agents, including the development of novel methodologies and tools for the detection of pathogens, the growing availability of genome sequences which provide unrestricted information on bacterial genetics and physiology and give clues for the control of pathogenic microorganisms, the expanding knowledge on the epidemiology of the emerging pathogens, and the extensive application of molecular genomics and postgenomics tools for deciphering the behavior of foodborne pathogens in food-related environments. Surveillance studies contribute also to providing data and a better understanding into the existence and spread of foodborne pathogens. There is a special interest to know the origin and routes of contamination of foodborne pathogens, while farm animals and domestic and wild animals have been reported to be …