Woodhead Publishing Tracing Pathogens in the Food Chain (Woodhead Publishing Series in Food Science, Technology and Nutrition)

Understanding the epidemiology of pathogens in production chains and processing environments is highly important for food safety control. Pathogen surveillance is also an essential part of a food safety programme. This significant collection considers current and emerging techniques to trace pathogens in the food chain and the implications for food safety. Opening sections cover methods to identify and type foodborne pathogens and advances in surveillance techniques. Following chapters concentrate on epidemiological issues in specific food production chains and research situations in which the techniques described in the book are applied. Key Features: reviews key aspects of the surveillance, analysis and spread of foodborne pathogens; provides an overview of method validation and quality assurance; examines the tracing of pathogens in specific food chains, such as red meat, game and dairy. Contents: Part 1 Foodborne pathogen surveillance and outbreak investigation: Surveillance for foodborne pathogens in humans; Systems for real-time, linked foodborne pathogen surveillance; Detection, investigation and control of outbreaks of foodborne disease; Attributing the burden of foodborne disease to specific sources of infection; Determining the economic costs and global burden of foodborne disease. Part 2 Subtyping of foodborne pathogens: Phenoytypic subtyping; Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and other commonly used molecular methods; Emerging bacterial subtyping methods; Development, validation and quality assurance of subtyping methods. Part 3 Molecular methods, genomics and other emerging approaches in the surveillance and study of foodborne pathogens: Sample preparation for detection by molecular biological methods; A comparison of molecular technologies and genomotyping for tracing and strain characterization of Campylobacter isolates; Investigating foodborne pathogens using comparative genomics; Protein-based analysis and other new and emerging non-nucleic acid based methods; Virulotyping; Using ribotyping to trace foodborne aerobic sporeforming bacteria in the factory: a case study; Biotracing: a novel concept in food safety integrating microbiology knowledge, complex systems approaches and probabilistic modeling. Part 4 Tracing pathogens in particular food chains: Red meat and game production chains and the abattoir; Fish production chains; Poultry and egg production chains; Dairy production; Molluscan shellfish production chains; Fruit and vegetable production chains.