Food Protection Trends - October 2009 - 696

Current applications of nanotechnology include applications in all industries including foods. Her talk focused on engineered nanoparticles to improve food ingredients, food processing, packaging and food safety. Many nanomaterials can have antimicrobial affectivity such as silver which has the ability to be applied to other antimicrobials to make films which can be applied to both the food and medical industries. Consumer acceptance and environmental impact appear to be the largest hurdles for nanotechnology to overcome especially in regards to the food industry. Nega Beru of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition of the US FDA spoke on managing chemical contaminatants in foods. The focus was on how the FDA deals with chemical contaminants in foods from both processing and the environment including acrylamide, furan, perchlorate and dioxin-like compounds. Dr. Beru emphasized the importance of further understanding the mechanism of acrylamide formation in foods through cooking methods and showed data from sampling a wide variety of foods for the various chemical contaminants. S25 – Food Safety Challenges for Unrefrigerated Display of Ready-to-Eat (RTE) Foods Shivani Gupta, Colorado State University Arpan Bhagat, Perdue University The first presentation delivered by Kathleen A. Glass was on “Microbiological Challenges of Unrefrigerated Display on Refrigerated RTE Foods” in the United States. Guidelines for storage of potentially hazardous foods (PHF) at different temperature/time combinations are available in food code (2005). According to the pH and aw table, the food products with pH 0.92) and pH (>5.0) will support the growth of different foodborne pathogens and impose higher risk. The pH and water activities of food products differ from in lot to lot production and changes during storage. This necessitates unified guidelines for refrigerated food products. National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF, 2009) report. Food processor can take help from published literature, food code tables, and various predictive models and/or conduct their own challenge studies to develop time/temperature guidelines for refrigerated food products during display. The second speaker Sharon Wood talked about the US retail food industry practices and perspectives on ambient display of RTE foods. Time is important for safety and quality of PHF. Control is essential not only to maintain microbial safety and quality of food but also to minimize changes in biochemical and physical properties of foods. Training and education of food handlers is important tools for execution of food safety practices. Some of best practices to be followed at food service level include labeling of food products with legible labels for refrigerated storage during display. Third presenter, Christina Belperio, spoke on temperature control of displayed potentially hazardous foods in Australia. Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) is the national food safety standard setting authority that oversees implementation and execution of food safety within Australia and at the border. Food standard code 3.2.2 clause 8(5) a requires a food business must, when displaying potentially hazardous, under controlled temperature range to minimize growth of pathogens that may be present or to prevent formation of toxins in the food. According to food handling survey (2007) report with introduction of food safety standards in manufacturing to retail level, there is significant improvement in public health and safety. The final presentation from Dr. Roy Betts discussed about European perspectives and directives on ambient display of chilled RTE foods in retail food locations. EC regulation 2073/2005 governs chilled RTE foods for cooking or other processing effective to eliminate or reduce the microorganisms of concern to an acceptable level. With growth in chilled food market, two durability indicators imposed by EU food labeling directive 2000/13/EEC are use by date and best before date. Only preservation system in chilled foods is chilling. All dates set by entrepreneur are based on temperature from predicted models considering limited consumer abuse. If abuse for longer time, then shelf life decreases and product becomes unacceptable before marked date and sometime compliant enforcement action taken to remove that product from commerce. S26 – Shigatoxin Escherichia coli: The Bad, the Worse, and the Pathogenic Hari Prakash Dwivedi, North Carolina State University Sarah Dierschke, University of Wisconsin Mohamed Karmali of Public Health Agency of Canada presented the first talk of the session on comparative genomics as an aid to identify the pathogenic STEC. He talked about the clinical features and public health significance of STEC. He also discussed about the comparative genomics of non-O157 STEC. He elaborated on the approaches to develop assays based on pathogen evolution and various markers specific for STEC. Later on, he discussed about the classification of STEC/VTEC serotypes into seropathotypes. At the end, he talked about different E. coli O157:H7 strains implicated in various outbreaks and their detection using advanced strain typing and diagnostic methods including techniques such as molecular serotyping and in-silico genomic analysis. Peter Gerner-Smidt (CDC, Atlanta) spoke on road map to the investigation of pathogenic STEC outbreaks and about Pulse Net-USA program and its role in molecular investigation of outbreaks. Pulse Net program includes the molecular typing of STEC by PFGE. He discussed about the O157 and non-O157 STEC submitted to Pulse Net in 2008. According to him, non-O157 STEC serogroups O26, O111, O103, O45, O121, and O145 have been reported to Pulse Net in 2008. He figured out that serotype is not independently associated with virulence. He also discussed about various STEC outbreaks and associated vehicles. He concluded that STEC is still a problem while not much is known about non-O157 stains. Although different produce related outbreaks have increased in number, beef still remains an important vehicle for STEC outbreaks. He emphasized on 696 FOOD PROTECTION TRENDS | OCTOBER 2009

Food Protection Trends - October 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Food Protection Trends - October 2009