Microbiological Safety of Food—2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Despite the scale of food production and preservation today and the growing demand for healthy and high-quality products, food safety still represents a significant public health challenge, with 25% of all food produced for human consumption lost or wasted. A variety of bacteria, as well as viruses and parasites, can contaminate food, causing illness and death, and a high percentage of food is wasted due to microbial alteration. Contaminated food not only adversely affects people’s health but also has negative economic consequences. This stresses the importance of preventing and mitigating risks linked to food contamination by optimizing and adapting our monitoring programs and systems. Addressing this issue is a shared responsibility and requires collaboration between all the actors operating along the entire food chain, from production to consumption. Microbiological food control plays a central role in ensuring food quality and safety, and a more consistent and sustainable approach must be considered in order to allow producers to control production processes and final products throughout their entire shelf-life. This Special Issue will focus on different food categories, i.e., dairy, meat, and deli products and ready-to-eat fresh vegetables, and different methods utilized for food microbiological monitoring, i.e., from traditional culture-based methods up to new alternative analytical methods. Several research groups are investigating the microbiological safety of these products in order to verify the compliance with national and international regulations and study microbial communities during the shelf-life of food with the final aim of preventing and controlling contamination, thereby ensuring higher food standards and protection for consumers.

Prof. Dr. Giovanni Antonini
Guest Editor

Dr. Valentina Gallo
Guest Editor Assistant

Manuscript Submission Information

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• food safety
• food chain
• food packaging
• food preservation
• food storage
• microbiological control
• analytical methods
• shelf-life of dairy products
• meat products
• vegetables
• ready-to-eat food