The EuFooD-STA Webinar "Emerging microbiological hazards bring new challenges to food safety" took place 17 November 2016. You can download a pdf-version of the presentation and view the recording below.
Management of food safety in companies is based on the Food Law (R178/200) which requires application of Good Manufacturing Practices and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point. But, despite significant efforts by food companies, more than 340,000 foodborne diseases still occur per year in Europe. We will provide in this webinar an overview of different drivers of changes that may induce emergence of new microbiological risks and may affect the microbiological food safety. Different emergence factors will be presented with illustrative examples: changes of the microorganisms themselves (new virulence factors, new genes of resistance, adaptation and persistence in food-processing environments), changes in microbial environment (climatic changes, modes of primary production, new modes of transformation or preservation, new consumption habits, globalization of commercial trade), and changes in host sensitivity (increasing in sensitive or ageing populations). We will conclude with some insights of the future challenges to microbial food safety: development of rapid and quantitative methods as early warning systems, improvement in methods for detection and identification of pathogens, model development (predictive microbiology, dynamic infectious disease models, risk factor models, source attribution models, multi-criteria analysis models).
Florence Dubois-Brissonnet is Professor of Microbiology and Food Safety in the Department of Food Science and Technology of the University AgroParisTech (France) since 2012 and was assistant professor in the same institute from 1992. In the research team “Bioadhesion, biofilm and hygiene of materials” which is part of Micalis Research Joint Unit (INRA, AgroParisTech), she coordinates research programs on adaptation and persistence of foodborne pathogens in food processing environments. She has developed an expertise on bacterial membrane adaptation under stresses through characterization of membrane fatty acid composition.
