Food Safety for Animal Production: Current Status and Future

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change, changing dietary patterns, and increasing food demand are transforming food systems, which along with globalization are reportedly impacting food safety. Ascertaining the safety of food is an important goal of food industries. To this end, controls are placed at every stage of the food supply chain: production (farming), processing, storage, and distribution. In particular, animal production and food derivation from animals are complex processes. Hazards could be introduced at various stages and from numerous sources. The hazards that could render food unsafe include pathogens (bacteria, viruses, parasites), antibiotics, pesticides, heavy metals and hormones.

Despite increased safety measures, recent years have witnessed outbreaks in zoonotic diseases, chemical contamination, the presence of micro- and nanoplastics, and antimicrobial resistance. As a result, increased attention is being given to animal breeding, pathogen detection and control, feed/forage improvement, veterinary drug control, and waste management. Improvements are also being made in other food chain downstream stages such as processing, storage and distribution. For the livestock industry, apart from improving animal health and welfare, ensuring the safety of animal derived foods is one of the major imperatives.  

In this Special Issue entitled “Food Safety for Animal Production”, we invite authors to submit original research articles, reviews, and viewpoint articles related to the global efforts being made to improve and ensure the safety of animals and animal-derived foods. We are also interested in articles that focus on ingredients, processes, value chains and technologies which can have a considerable impact on food safety. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Animal breeding
• Animal feed/forage
• Pathogen detection and control
• Chemical contaminant detection and control
• Nanomaterial applications
• Novel ingredients
• Novel processing methods
• Improved supply chains or value chains
• Micro- and nanoplastics
• Nanosensors
• Animal-derived foods

Dr. Karna Ramachandraiah
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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