Meat Quality and Safety and Microbial Analysis

Dear Colleagues,

Fresh meat is highly prone to microbiological contamination, which is one of the major global causes of foodborne diseases in humans. In addition to the challenges of guaranteeing its safety, the meat industry also has to consider the same issues for meat-derived products, which are commonly ready-to-eat. Nowadays, the development of alternative preservation methods both in raw meat and meat products has been attracting interest. In this sense, there is growing attention in the meat industry toward using natural products and reducing the use of preservatives (NaCl, nitrites, etc.), in order to satisfy consumer requirements. Such strategies also aim to inactivate and control spoilage microorganisms.
Furthermore, attention is also given to the development of rapid microbiological tools to accurately verify meat and meat products in order to guarantee their safety. Such advanced methods would allow for the improvement of preventive and risk-based approaches.
Our objective is to gather all the new information in this field and include it in the Special Issue on “Meat Quality and Safety and Microbial Analysis”. Concretely, this Special Issue looks forward to receiving contributions, either research papers or reviews, about different aspects of microbiological quality and safety of meat and meat products with special focus on:

• Microbiological hazards in meat and meat products;
• Emerging technologies for detecting and quantifying pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms as well as the toxins—when produced—in meat and meat products;
• Advances in techniques to inactive pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms in meat and meat products;
• Advances in analyzing gene and protein expression of microorganisms surviving preservation methods: genomic and proteomic techniques;
• Effect of current tendencies in the meat industry regarding the quality and safety of products: salt reduction, nitrite-free meat products, etc.;
• Techniques for predicting meat quality and safety;
• Meat decontamination methods;
• Application of starter and protective cultures in the meat industry.

Dr. Maria J. Andrade
Prof. Juan José Córdoba Ramos
Guest Editors

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