Microbiological Control

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Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT’s) research enterprise in Singapore, the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), are conducting research to aid the development of nanosensor technology for the detection of foodborne bacteria.

Similar to the gut microbiome, foods have a diverse community of indigenous or native microbes that reside on a food product. These microbes are influenced by changes in temperature, salinity, pH, oxygen, and exposure to other organisms, resulting in shifts in the bacterial population proportions. These dynamics can be further influenced by adding new bacteria—or bacteria already present in greater proportions—to help influence and improve food safety and quality. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS) has announced two upcoming public meetings of the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) and the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection (NACMPI).

Researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are developing a vaccine for human norovirus, which is the leading cause of foodborne illness worldwide.

A recent study has added to the growing amount of evidence regarding the global rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in foodborne pathogens, finding concerning levels of microbiological contamination and multidrug resistance (MDR) to critical antibiotics among pathogens isolated from pork and poultry meat samples purchased from leading retail outlets in Kenya. 

Advocacy group Consumer Reports (CR) has compiled a list of the ten most high-risk foods, based on recall and foodborne illness outbreak data collected from federal food regulatory agencies.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service’s (USDA’s FSIS) has announced that is granting a pilot project to Pilgrim’s Pride in Mount Pleasant, Texas to examine the merits and logistics of excluding Salmonella poultry vaccine strains from the FSIS Salmonella performance categorization calculation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) has published two reports on its foodborne illness outbreak investigations and sampling activities for fiscal year 2022.

On March 8, 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released an Immediate National Strategy to Increase the Resiliency of the U.S. Infant Formula Market. On the same day, the agency’s response to the recent infant formula safety and supply crisis was called into question during a hearing with the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services Hearing.

In a recent study, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) as one of the top five pathogens contributing to foodborne illnesses in the U.S. Cases of salmonellosis were largely associated with beef products, despite implementation of interventions at slaughter and processing facilities to reduce contamination.