Food Protection Trends - November/December 2017 - 514

Susanne Keller, Shigenobu Koseki, Bala Kottapalli, Brian
Kraus, Young Seok Kweon, Mijin Kwon, Yvan Le Marc, Yunjin
Lee, Glenda Lewis, Quanhong Li, Yanbin Li, Zhe Li, Chao
Liao, Lisa Lucore, Stephanie Maggio, Deon Mahoney, Bradley
Marks, Miho Matakatsu, Conor McGauran, Adora Christee
Mercado, Zahra Mohammad, Hyejin Moon, Gerardo Morantes,
Yemi Ogunrinola, Chris Okolo, Samet Ozturk, Haiying Pang,
Mickey Parish, Laura Patterson, Vera Peterson, Raquel
Pinto, Aurelie Pohl, Monica Ponder, Abani Pradhan, Prasant
Prusty, Lakshmanan Ramamoorthi, S. G. D. Nagalakshmi
Reddi, Catherine Rolfe, Joyjit Saha, Sofia Santillana-Farakos,
Oscar Santos, Renee Schwartz, Jenny Scott, Dennis Seman,
Panagiotis Skandamis, Edward Sliwinski, Philip Steinbrunner,
Quincy Suehr, Katherine Swanson, Yoko Takahashi, Mark
Tamplin, Abdullatif Tay, Fanny Tenenhaus-Aziza, Zeynal
Topalcengiz, Tomohiko Tsurumaru, Aaron Uesugi, Jane Van
Doren, Xinyue Wang, Christopher Wells, Richard Whiting,
Pamela Wilger, Jian Wu, Xingning Xiao, Hongshun Yang, Mira
Yoon, Yohan Yoon, Yangjunna Zhang, Zijin Zhou, and Marcel
Zwietering. Number of Attendees: 117.
Meeting Called to Order: 9:00 a.m., Sunday, July 9, 2017.
Minutes Recording Secretary: Bala Kottapalli (with the help
of Yuhuan Chen and Marcel Zwietering).
Chair Marcel Zwietering welcomed attendees, followed
by self-introductions for all PDG members and visitors. Marcel
reviewed the meeting agenda. No additional agenda items
proposed.
Greetings/Comments from Executive Board:
Mickey Parish indicated that IAFP organization is healthy,
financially strong and having a record attendance. He also
mentioned MMRA PDG is very strong and active. He mentioned that 400 students registered for the meeting and
requested the PDG groups to find ways in recognizing students.
Minutes: Minutes from the 2016 meeting were presented for
comments or edits. There were no edits. Motion to adopt the
minutes was by Katie Swanson, seconded by Jane Van Doren.
Minutes adopted.
Matters Arising from 2016 PDG Meeting:
Marcel explained the selection process for new Vice
Chair. This included multiple nominations from PDG members and elections through a voting process. Marcel indicated
that this type of selection process will be adopted for future
selection of Vice Chair(s), so nominations are welcome.
Nominations are welcome from different regions (U.S., Europe,
Asia/Eurasia, Asia Pacific) and affiliations (industry, government, academia, etc.). Nominations are due by October 3,
2017! People may self-nominate or nominate others.
Updates from SRA, MRA Specialty Group and ICPMF
Committee:
Dr. Abani Pradhan provided the vision statement for SRA.
He indicated that SRA is a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary,
scholarly, international society that provides an open forum for
all those who are interested in risk analysis. SRA has several
specialty groups one which is Microbial Risk Analysis Specialty
Group (MRASG). The MRSAG focuses on public health risks
associated with a variety of biological hazards. Different activities of MRSAG include: (1) sponsor/organize symposia, technical sessions, posters at SRA annual meeting, (2) organize
webinars, (3) encourage students - Specialty Group student
merit award competition, and (4) facilitate communications and
networking (e.g., LinkedIn subgroup). At the upcoming 2017

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Food Protection Trends November/December

SRA annual meeting (Arlington, VA), 6 topics relating to microbial risk assessment will be sponsored. For more information
relating to SRA, please contact the Chairperson Abani Prahan
(akp@umd.edu).
Fanny Tenenhaus-Aziza gave an overview of ICPMF
activities. The mission of ICPMF is to catalyze the development of predictive modelling in foods, primarily through
advancing the success and sustainability of the biennial
ICPMF-conferences. Currently the organization is in the process of revising their by-laws. The objectives of 2017-2019
include: (1) to export the concept of the Software Fair to conferences gathering microbiologists, industrial representatives
and (2) preparing ICPMF10 (2017) and ICPMF2011 (2019).
In the 2017 IAFP meeting, a symposium and software fair
are being organized by ICPMF and Fanny thanked MMRA
PDG for supporting the events. Future actions will include: (1)
Software fair at Food Micro 2018, (2) session on predictive
microbiology at Food Micro 2018, (3) a webinar on PM and RA
tools, and (4) potential collaboration with SRA.
Guest Speaker: Sofia M. Santillana Farakos, Ph.D., (Center
for Food Safety and Nutrition, US FDA)
Highlights of the presentation:
Low water activity foods are foods with water activity less
than 0.7 and stored for long periods of time at ambient temperature. Salmonella survival in low moisture foods typically
follows a Weibull or a log-linear distribution. Salmonella survival is influenced by water activity and temperature. During
storage, increased survival is apparent at lower temperatures
and lower water activities. At the higher water activities the
lethality rate is faster compared to the lethality in lower water
activity products. Major influential factors in thermal inactivation include: (1) environmental conditions (2) food matrix (3)
serotype (4) growth media and (5) inoculum drying conditions
(affects cell physiology). Stress adaptation studies showed the
rpos gene expression slightly changes during storage. Studies
relating to risk assessment of Salmonella in almonds were
summarized. It was indicated that a 4-log reduction in almonds
reduces illnesses to < 1 per year. It was pointed out that considerations must be given to re-evaluating risk assessments
if there is a risk of post-process contamination. Future work
should focus on: (1) controlled conditions (2) physiology of the
organism (3) predictive modeling of dynamic conditions (4)
QMRA contamination data and (5) Listeria risk assessments.
Studies relating to risk assessments are presented in the form
of posters and symposia at this year IAFP 2017.
Following the presentation, there was discussion on the
following points:
For your assessments, did you (Sofia) take into
consideration how the person prepared the inoculum? Is
there a reference on how to prepare inocula for low water
activity products to not disrupt the water activity of the
product:
* For the first question the answer is Yes. For the second
question, to the best of Sofia's knowledge there is no
specific method to do it because every method has its
own limitations
Use of single strain vs cocktail for inactivation studies
* Better to use multiple single strains separately vs.
cocktail to understand effect of thermal process on
individual strains
Have you seen any great influences in your modeling if
you prepared the inoculum dry vs. wet?
* Sofia responded Yes. When cells are dried, they
become more resistant.

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