Growers and processors of USDA certified organic foods are in need of suitable organic antimicrobials. The purpose of the research reported here was to develop and test natural antimicrobials derived from an all-natural by-product, organic pecan shells. Unroasted and roasted organic pecan shells were subjected to solvent free extraction to produce antimicrobials that were tested against Listeria spp. and L. monocytogenes serotypes to determine the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) of antimicrobials. The effectiveness of pecan shell extracts were further tested using a poultry skin model system and the growth inhibition of the Listeria cells adhered onto the skin model were quantified. The solvent free extracts of pecan shells inhibited Listeria strains at MICs as low as 0.38%. The antimicrobial effectiveness tests on a poultry skin model exhibited nearly a 2 log reduction of the inoculated cocktail mix of Listeria strains when extracts of pecan shell powder were used. The extracts also produced greater than a 4 log reduction of the indigenous spoilage bacteria on the chicken skin. Thus, the pecan shell extracts may prove to be very effective alternative antimicrobials against food pathogens and supplement the demand for effective natural antimicrobials for use in organic meat processing.
KSWFoodWorld
FoodWorld 
Yale University School of Medicine researchers described in detail how Salmonella is able to make these proteins line up in just the right sequence to invade host cells. “These mechanisms present us with novel targets that might form the basis for the development of an entirely new class of antimicrobials,” said Professor Dr. Jorge Galan, senior author of the paper and the Lucille P. Markey Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and chair of the Section of Microbial Pathogenesis at Yale. In the new National Institutes of Health -funded study, Galan and colleagues identify what they call a bacterial sorting platform, which attracts needed proteins and lines them up in a specific order. If the proteins do not line up properly, Salmonella, as well as many other bacterial pathogens, cannot “inject” them into host cells to commandeer host cell functions, the lab has found. Understanding how this machine works raises the possibility of new therapies that disable this protein delivery machine, thwarting the ability of the bacterium to become pathogenic. The process would not kill the bacteria as most antibiotics do, but would cripple its ability to do harm. In theory, this means bacteria such as Salmonella might not develop resistance to new therapies as quickly as they usually do to conventional antibiotics.