AROUND LAB NEWS / EN » Food Microbiology

EXPERT – FOOD MICROBIOLOGY & LISTERIA MONOCYTOGENES

AROUND LAB NEWS / EN — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 13:57:08 +0000

Factors that may

have impact on

the growing

of Listeria monocytogenes

Sanco. Guidance document on Listeria monocytogenes shelf-life studies for ready-to-eat foods (2008).

	Growing	Growing	Growing	No growing
	Lower limit	Optimal	Higher limit	No growing
Temperature (°C)	1,5 / +3	30 / 37	45	-18
pH	4,2 / 4,3	7,0	9,4 / 9,5	3,3 / 4,2
Water activity	0,90 / 0,93	0,99	>0,99	<0,90
% Salt concentration	<0,5	0,7	12 / 16	> 20
Atmosphere	Facultative aerobic: it can grow in presence or absence of O2
Heating treatment during food production	Different combinations time / temperature to obtain D-6

Intervals and the pH limits involved in microbial growth of food

AROUND LAB NEWS / EN — Fri, 29 Apr 2016 13:21:35 +0000

F. Castelvetri, R. Orlandini, F. Di Giovanni, O. Pellerey in the paper “Alimenti confezionati – Come si determinano i tempi della shelf-life. E’ fondamentale controllare gli indicatori microbici”

FOOD	pH Interval	Inhibition of micro-organisms
Low acid foods	7,0-5,0	Some Bacillus and Clostridium
Medium acid foods	5,0-4,0 / 6,0-4,7	Several Bacillus e Clostridium (Cl. botulinum)
Acid foods	4,6-4,1 / 3.9	All sporogenes and all non acidophilic bacteria
Very acid foods	Lower than 3,9	All micro-organisms with the exception of lactobacillus, yeast and moulds

XIV WORKSHOP on RAPID METHODS AND AUTOMATION IN FOOD MICROBIOLOGY

AROUND LAB NEWS / EN — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 09:23:22 +0000

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain, November 24-27, 2015

Designed for: directors and technicians of industries, consultancies and laboratories of food, and other sectors (microbiological, clinical, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, chemical, environmental, etc.); food inspectors and other government staff; university teachers and technical staff, graduate and postgraduate students; people from other research centres; etc.

Updated and detailed information: http://jornades.uab.cat/workshopmrama/en

Lecturers and lectures:

- Key-note speaker and Major lecturer: Dr. Daniel Y. C. Fung (Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, USA): overview on rapid methods, automation and miniaturization in microbiology
- Dr. Cécile Lahellec (AFSSA, Maisons-Alfort, France): “Short story of a long period of interaction with poultry bacteria: the saga of salmonellas”
- Dr. Armand Sánchez Bonastre (UAB): “Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)”
- Mr. Daniel López Medina (PremiumLab, Sant Boi de Llobregat, Spain): “Validation of ELISA kits for allergen determination”
- Mr. Jon Basagoiti Azpitarte (Imagining Management Systems, Ermua, Spain): “Microbiological analyses: are they the bumper of your system or a guarantee for your consumers’ health”
- Dr. Daniel Ramón Vidal (Biópolis, Paterna, Spain): “Massive genome sequencing applied to food safety”
- Ms. Alicia Subires Orenes (UAB): “Flow cytometry for injured foodborne pathogenic bacteria detection”
- Dr. Norbert Langfeldt (Zentrales Institut des Sanitätsdienstes der Bundeswehr Kiel, Kronshagen, Germany): “Food hygiene and safety in crisis regions: application of rapid methods in a field laboratory”
- Mr. David Tomás Fornés (Nestec Ltd, Nestlé Research Center, Lausanne, Switzerland): “Sample preparation for microbiological analyses: challenges and improvements in the food industry”

3-day laboratory sessions:

- sample preparation and plating
- rapid viable cell count methods
- environmental control
- chromogenic culture media
- miniaturization
- diagnostic kits
- methods based on ATP – bioluminescence, colorimetry, fluorometry
- immunological detection methods (latex agglutination, immunoprecipitation, lateral immunomigration)

Demonstrations:

- Use of internet for applications of predictive microbiology
- Typical deviations in food safety system certification audits (BRC, IFS and FSSC22000) (SGS ICS Ibérica)
- Tecnología PlasmIA: detección fácil, rápida y múltiple de patógenos mediante un nuevo ensayo inmuno-óptico (Prestodiag)

And also:

- 2 round tables (Massive genome sequencing applied to food safety / Instrumentation in food microbiology, world trade trends, and other current topics)
- Exhibition from 11 microbiology companies: 3M España, BD Biosciences, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Gomensoro, INGENASA, Interscience, IUL, Panreac Química, Sigma-Aldrich Química, Thermo Scientific, Werfen – QIAGEN

Preservation Techniques for Controlling Spoilage in Fruit Juices

AROUND LAB NEWS / EN — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 13:56:34 +0000

Fruit juices are important commodities in the global market providing vast possibilities for new value added products to meet consumer demand for convenience, nutrition, and health. Fruit juices are spoiled primarily due to proliferation of acid tolerant and osmophilic microflora. There is also risk of food borne microbial infections which is associated with the consumption of fruit juices. In order to reduce the incidence of outbreaks, fruit juices are preserved by various techniques. Thermal pasteurization is used commercially by fruit juice industries for the preservation of fruit juices but results in losses of essential nutrients and changes in physicochemical and organoleptic properties. Nonthermal pasteurization methods such as high hydrostatic pressure, pulsed electric field, and ultrasound and irradiations have also been employed in fruit juices to overcome the negative effects of thermal pasteurization. Some of these techniques have already been commercialized. Some are still in research or pilot scale. Apart from these emerging techniques, preservatives from natural sources have also shown considerable promise for use in some food products. In this review article, spoilage, pathogenic microflora, and food borne outbreaks associated with fruit juices of last two decades are given in one section. In other sections various prevention methods to control the growth of spoilage and pathogenic microflora to increase the shelf life of fruit juices are discussed.

Fonte: International Journal of Microbiology

Practical Microbiology Training

AROUND LAB NEWS / EN — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 11:38:40 +0000

Food Packaging

AROUND LAB NEWS / EN — Thu, 27 Nov 2014 14:10:07 +0000

Canning. Aseptic Processes. Modifying microbial growth. Final Comments.

Dr Roy Betts, Head of Microbiology, Campden BRI, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, GL55 6LD, UK.

Produced as a service to the food industry by Oxoid, part of Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Font >>>

Campylobacter

AROUND LAB NEWS / EN — Thu, 27 Nov 2014 13:50:32 +0000

What is it? What does it cause? What does it come from? Controls. Detection and Enumeration. Conclusions. References.

International Food Hygiene Magazine

Dr Roy Betts, Head of Microbiology, Campden BRI, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, GL55 6LD, UK.

Produced as a service to the food industry by Oxoid, part of Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Font >>>

Our Teeth Gave Us the Edge Over Our Primitive Relatives

AROUND LAB NEWS / EN — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 08:17:30 +0000

Font: Parker

Il microrganismo che blocca la Salmonella – Tomato Turf Wars: Benign Bug Bests Salmonella. Tomato Eaters Win

AROUND LAB NEWS / EN — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 08:13:38 +0000

Scientists from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have identified a benign bacterium that shows promise in blocking Salmonella from colonizing raw tomatoes. Their research is published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

When applied to Salmonella-contaminated tomato plants in a field study, the bacterium, known as Paenibacillus alvei, significantly reduced the concentration of the pathogen compared to controls.

Outbreaks of Salmonella traced to raw tomatoes have sickened nearly 2,000 people in the US from 2000-2010, killing three. Since the millennium, this pathogen has caused 12 multistate outbreaks of food-borne illness—more than one each year. It was this carnage that provided the impetus for the study, according to corresponding author Jie Zheng, of the FDA.

“The conditions in which tomatoes thrive are also the conditions in which Salmonella thrives,” says coauthor Eric W. Brown, also of FDA, “but we knew that if we could block Salmonella from infecting the tomato plant, we could reduce its risk of infecting the person who eats the tomato.”

The logic behind the work is simple. Many innocuous bacterial species thrive within the tomato-growing environment.

“We hypothesized that such an organism could be found that possessed the ability to outcompete or chemically destroy Salmonella,” says Zheng. “After screening many hundreds of potential biocontrol strains of bacteria that were isolated from farms and natural environments in the Mid-Atlantic region, we found about 10 isolates of bacteria representing very different genera and species that could curb the growth and/or destroy Salmonella in our test assays.”

Many of these were as pathogenic to humans as is Salmonella, but two isolates, belonging to the environmentally friendly species, P. alvei, strongly inhibited growth of Salmonella.

“This bacterium also has no known history of human pathology, making it a great candidate as a biological control agent,” says Zheng.

“While farmers and agricultural scientists have long used microbes to prevent plant diseases, we now have the opportunity to add a naturally-occurring microbe to a crop in the field with the goal of preventing human disease,” says Zheng. “Our ambitions are now to extend this microbial approach to cantaloupe, leafy greens, and other crops that have lately been responsible for outbreaks of food-borne Salmonella and E. coli.”

The manuscript can be found online at http://bit.ly/asmtip0514a. The final version of the article is scheduled for the July 2014 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Font: ASM

Testing by smartphone your food before you eat it

AROUND LAB NEWS / EN — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 15:43:38 +0000

Testing by smartphone your food before you eat it A new era is coming for the food safety. The EU project “food sniffer” which bring together 10 European partners is a new way to ensure food safety immediately before it ends on our plates.

The smartphone project application will not only trace harmful substances in our food but also transmit these on the spot analytical test results along with the metadata, identity of the user, time and date, location and nature of the sample to the internet cloud.