Food Microbiology and Safety

Food Microbiology and Safety Overview

Due to the complexity of food supply chains from farm to consumer tables, food products are easily exposed to contamination. The movement of food through the supply chain involves interactions between actors like farmers, aggregators, manufacturers and distributors. At every stage, there are human and other resource contact requirements, exposing food to pollution either in the course of processing, packaging or transportation. Because each value-chain actor and process are relevant to the supply chain’s full length, the exposure of food to health hazards at every point affects food safety which remains an issue of concern in the food industry.
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Food safety ensures the implementation of safe handling practices to eliminate health risks to consumers. To successfully implement food safety measures however, a knowledge of microbiology is required. This is primarily because even though food contamination may involve heavy metals like lead and mercury, this is rear and may be easily detected when compared with food contamination caused by microorganisms like bacteria, virus, and fungi. As such, an understanding of the features and characteristics of these organisms, their responses to biological and chemical processes is required to eliminate their invasion of food across the supply chain. To ensure the safety of foods offered to consumers, we provide capacity building services to farmers and other value-chain actors across the food supply chain.