Emerging Technologies in Food Safety Intervention

Dear Colleagues,

Food processing technologies have been applied and developed by humanity since ancient times, with the objective of transforming and modifying raw products, obtaining more stable final food matrices, improving the organoleptic quality, and the nutritional properties in food, ensuring food microbiological safety. These technologies (mainly based on high temperature/low temperature application) have enabled the adaptation of food raw products to human needs, leading to the survival and advancement of ancient civilizations into modern well-established communities, and increasing the competitiveness of the market and of emergent companies. Today, globalization, over-population, the increase in the number of in elderly people worldwide, climate change, the emergence of novel food and clinical microbial pathogens, and the depletion of natural resources have forced human adaptation and reaction, leading towards more accurate approaches in food production and transformation in the future. There is a need for innovation in food processing in order to design novel products that satisfy consumer demands (healthier products with intact or improved bioactivities, as well as being organoleptically attractive) and that are microbiologically safe, which needs to be explored in order to be satisfied.

To date, specifically, microbiological risks continue to be a challenge for the industry (30% of people in industrialized countries suffer from a food-borne disease each year) mainly in relation to some specific products (e.g., powders), regarding some specific pathogens that are highly resistant to conventional processing methods (thermal resistance of bacterial spores), and in many conflictive scenarios (transportation high distances, and management at home of perishable food contaminated matrices). Novel non-thermal technologies (such as high hydrostatic pressure, pulsed electric fields, ultrasounds, and UV light, among others) have demonstrated to be effective in achieving microbial food safety objectives (FSOs) and preserving nutritional and organoleptical food values. Additionally, some technologies are able to extract (polyphenols, carbohydrates, etc) and generate specific biochemical components in food with enhanced bioactive value (new bioactive peptides and short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) after processing followed by probiotics fermentation) (HHP among the most studied technologies about this topic). In spite of the promising results obtained to date, scarce information has been reported regarding some processes that are present in TRL 4-5, such as cold plasma, and some risks associated with minimum processes are not yet fully understood (e.g., generation of sub-lethally damaged cells, changes in virulence on the resistant population, and change into non-cultivable state due to treatment, among others). The present Special Issue aims to further the understanding of this field and compile studies exploring challenging aspects in novel food processing techniques applied with the aim of achieving food microbiological safety.

Prof. Dr. María Consuelo Pina-Pérez
Prof. Dr. Michael Beyrer
Guest Editors

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• food microbiological safety
• novel food processing techniques
• non-thermal technologies (such as high hydrostatic pressure, pulsed electric fields, cold plasma, UV light, among others)
• natural antimicrobials
• hurdle technology
• quantitative microbiological risk assessment (QMRA)