Category Archives: Food Illness

MDPI

The globalization of food trade and the emergence of disease outbreaks involving several foodborne pathogens and foods has focused the attention of both the research community and consumers on food safety. Microbial contamination can involve different stages of food processing and distribution, with a potentially dramatic impact on human health and food business. Several methods, involving culture-dependent and -independent techniques, were developed to detect foodborne pathogens in the food supply chain. In this respect, gold-standard reference methods are currently available for most pathogens, but some of them are time-consuming and expensive. Moreover, routine controls carried out by manufacturers and food safety authorities are normally focused on bacteria and not on viruses and fungi, which can have a significant impact on food safety. In the European Union, the number of human cases caused by Noroviruses and other Caliciviruses increased sharply in 2021 [1]. Therefore, based on the evidence given by an increasing amount of research, control strategies show a clear trend towards molecular techniques, such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), multiplex PCR, real-time PCR (qPCR), reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR), DNA microarrays, nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA), isothermal DNA amplification techniques, and next-generation sequencing (NGS) [2]. Moreover, to expand the knowledge on the behaviour of pathogens in food environments, proteome profiling and biosensors shed light on how these microorganisms interact and prevail in food systems [3].