Processed food microbiology and safety: risks, trends and future perspectives

Abstract

Improvements in living standards worldwide have enabled greater appreciation of food products across distant and diverse cultures. Food processing renders nutrients and flavours with greater endurance thereby facilitating usage over longer periods of time. Processed foods experience a distinctive threat from microorganisms that can thrive despite and even due to the processing methods used. Addressing the microbial safety of processed foods requires specialized insights into relevant modes of pathogenesis and detection methods. This chapter presents a holistic picture of the risks associated with microbial growth in processed food matrices. The first part discusses microbial pathogenesis in response to the physicochemical and biochemical changes associated with processed foods. The second part covers active measures to ensure processed food safety including frontier packaging materials and modern strategies involving informatics and machine learning. The chapter projects a conceptual framework for systematic study of processed food microbiology and the cutting-edge approaches for addressing processed food safety.