Although pathogen detection has deservedly received much attention for food products and on food plant surfaces, few methods have addressed microbial contamination in water.
Implementing in-house microbial screening technologies allows the opportunity to catch where and how the contamination might have occurred in real time, ensuring greater safety of released food products.
In the U.S., between 1983 and 2002, the six most commonly occurring serotypes of non-O157 Escherichia coli were O26, O111, O103, O121, O45 and O145, which have become foodborne pathogens of interest.
During last decade, a few novel intervention technologies were successfully developed, approved by regulatory agencies and applied as inactivation steps to enhance food safety.