Food Safety From The Farm to The Fork: Integrated Strategies and Innovations For South Carolina

The major goals of this project involve maintaining product safety from the farm to the fork. In animal product food safety, the source of bacterial contamination can begin on the farm in animal feed. The initial portion of this project will investigate animal feed safety with food safety in mind. The project will continue into following bacterial transfer in food settings and finally the use of biosensors for keeping foods safe. The research will contribute to the ongoing efforts to improve food safety from the farm to the fork. By ensuring microbial safety of animal feed ingredients, the incidence of animal-borne disease entities should be reduced throughout the animal product food chain. This will not only work to help keep South Carolinians safe from foodborne illness, but also will provide stability in the food animal industries by better defining conditions which protect animal feed ingredients from contamination. Continuing to the human food side of this farm to fork model,
this study will follow potential avenues for contamination and ways to prevent it so that South Carolina residents and others have lowered risk for foodborne illness.There four objectives for this project are:Using commercially available rendered meal samples, examine the relationship between water activity and moisture content and its impact on survival of Salmonella in animal feed ingredient products;Determine potential pathogenicity of Salmonella strains isolated from animal feed ingredients using C. elegans;Determine bacterial transfer and survival in food settings that impact food safety/quality;Investigate biosensors for food safety.