Research Publications (Food Safety)

by Abdulaziz G. Alghamdi, Mohamed H. EL-Saeid, Abdulhakim J. Alzahrani, Hesham M. Ibrahim

by Francesca Mascia, Ilya Mazo, Wei-Lun Alterovitz, Konstantinos Karagiannis, Wells W. Wu, Rong-Fong Shen, Julia A. Beaver, V. Ashutosh Rao

Author(s): Zhichuang Ge, Lijun Xu, Xiaomiao Hu, Shanshan Zhu, Ying Zhao, Yang Li, Kaituo Liu, Ruyi Gao, Xiaoquan Wang, Jiao Hu, Xiaowen Liu, Shunlin Hu, Daxin Peng, Min Gu, Xiufan Liu

Author(s): Yeon Ho Kim, Chanjae Lee, Sung-Jae Lee, Ki Sun Yoon

Author(s): Xu Chu, Yiying Jin, Zhujie Chu

Author(s): Natalia Casado, Sonia Morante-Zarcero, Isabel Sierra

Background
In the last years, several food alerts have identified high levels of pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) in a wide variety of food products, highlighting their occurrence as a concerning food safety issue.

Author(s): Thomas Rawson Multiple foodborne routes of Salmonella infection have been observed; however, the majority of the literature to date has been dominated by research into the most frequently observed reservoirs, such as chicken, beef, and pork. While less commonly observed, outbreaks of Salmonella within sheep meat still occur, requiring extensive investigation by food safety inspectors.

Author(s): Zhigang Ke, Yan Bai, Yiwen Bai, Yushan Chu, Saiqi Gu, Xingwei Xiang, Yuting Ding, Xuxia Zhou

Author(s): Winnie-Pui-Pui Liew, Mohd-Redzwan Sabran, Leslie-Thian-Lung Than, Fauzah Abd-Ghani

Author(s): Eric Jubinville, Mathilde Trudel-Ferland, Janie Amyot, Julie Jean

Rapid and sensitive detection technologies for food contaminants play vital roles in food safety. Due to the complexity of the food matrix and the trace amount distribution, traditional methods often suffer from unsatisfying accuracy, sensitivity, or specificity. In past decades, single-molecule detection (SMD) has emerged as a way to realize the rapid and ultrasensitive measurement with low sample consumption, showing a great potential in food contaminants detection.

Undercooked or raw meat containing cyst-stage bradyzoites and oocyst-contaminated pets are presumed to constitute a major source of human toxoplasmosis. As the geospatial epidemiology of Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) infection in livestock, pets, and humans is rarely studied in China, we undertook a geospatial analysis using GIS visualization techniques.

The Salinas Valley in Monterey County, California, USA, is a highly productive agricultural region. Irrigation runoff containing pesticides at concentrations toxic to aquatic organisms poses a threat to aquatic ecosystems within local watersheds.

Food safety being a vast global public health threat has attracted growing concern. Efficient detection techniques for food hazards are essential to ensure food safety. Various methods have been established to sense food hazards for solving food safety-related problems. However, due to trace levels of food contaminants, pathogens, and toxins, the development of efficient and reliable detection techniques has been challenging work.

Tenuazonic acid (TeA), as a naturally occurring mycotoxin found in sorghum, corn, wheat, oat, tomato, apple, rapeseed and their products, has attracted increasing attention due to its wide contamination and high dietary exposure of infants and toddlers. Traditional methods usually require large instruments and high working conditions but are not suitable for low-cost large-scale screening. Thus, a rapid, sensitive and inexpensive method for TeA detection is required.

This study aimed to assess ecological and health risk of heavy metals (HMs) in the 35 topsoils in southeastern Iran. Ecological and health risks were assessed based on the EPA method. The order of the HMs followed as: Zn > Cr>Cu>Pb>As>Cd. All samples, except As and Cu, had the moderate enrichment and low to moderate pollution, respectively. The As in both regions and Cu in the city was classified in the lack to minimal enrichment and no pollution category.

The effectiveness of a UV-A light emitting diode system (LED) to reduce the concentrations of aflatoxin B1 and aflatoxin M1 (AFB1, AFM1) in whole milk (WM) was investigated. Irradiation experiments were conducted using an LED system operating at 365 nm. Known concentrations of aflatoxins were spiked in WM and irradiated at quantified UV doses, which was calculated based on the average volumetric intensity.

Forest soils play an important role in the global ecosystem, providing many beneficial services. Protection of forests and their soils from anthropogenic impacts is therefore of utter importance to conservation efforts. Lead (Pb) is one of the most widespread anthropogenic pollutants and has been introduced into forests of the Czech Republic since medieval times, mostly from smelting, coal burning, and later also leaded gasoline.

The level of pathogens in poultry litter used for raising broiler chickens is critical to the overall health of a broiler chicken flock and food safety. Therefore, it is imperative that methods used for determining bacterial concentration in litter are accurate and reproducible across studies.

The Gram-negative, obligate intracellular bacterium Coxiella burnetii is the causative organism of the zoonosis Q fever and is known for its resistance toward various intra- and extracellular stressors. Infected ruminants such as cattle, sheep, and goats can shed the pathogen in their milk. Pasteurization of raw milk was introduced for the inactivation of C. burnetii and other milk-borne pathogens.

Drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) is a serious public health problem and threat to global TB prevention and control. Streptomycin (STR) is the earliest and classical anti-TB drug, and it is the earliest drug that generated resistance to anti-TB treatment, which limits its use in treating TB and impedes TB control efforts. The rapid, economical, and highly sensitive detection of STR-resistant TB may help reduce disease transmission and morbimortality.

Colistin is a last-resort antibiotic in fighting severe infections caused by multidrug resistant Gram negative pathogens in hospitals. Zoonotic bacteria acquire colistin resistance in animal reservoirs and mediate its spread along the food chain. This is the case of non-typhoid serovars of Salmonella enterica. Colistin-resistant S. enterica in foods represents a threat to human health. Here, we assessed the prevalence of colistin-resistance in food-borne isolates of S.

Carbapenem-resistant P. aeruginosa has become a major clinical problem due to limited treatment options. However, studies assessing the trends in the molecular epidemiology and mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in this pathogen are lacking in Saudi Arabia. Here, we reported the genome characterization in a global context of carbapenem non-susceptible clinical isolates from a nationally representative survey.

Raw milk is susceptible to microbial contamination during transportation and storage. Pseudomonas fluorescens producing heat-resistant enzymes have become the most common and harmful psychrophilic microorganisms in the cold chain logistics of raw milk. To rapidly detect P. fluorescens in raw milk, the protease gene aprX was selected as a detection target to construct a set of primers with strong specificity, and a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay was established.

Enrofloxacin, a veterinary antibiotic that persists in food, poses a risk to human health. Here, a monoclonal antibody against enrofloxacin, 1H12, was prepared based on the hapten ENR-1, and showed excellent sensitivity with a 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) of 0.03 ng/mL. Using this antibody, 2 lateral-flow immunochromatographic assays were developed for determination of enrofloxacin in egg, milk, honey, and chicken samples.