Microbiological Risk Assessment in Foods
A special issue of Foods (ISSN 2304-8158). This special issue belongs to the section "Food Microbiology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 November 2021) | Viewed by 31425
Special Issue Editors
Interests: food safety; food microbiology; foodborne pathoges and zoonoses; risk assessment
Interests: food safety; food metagenomics; food borne bacterial pathogens; microbiological risk assessment
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Foodborne illnesses caused by microbiological hazards are a large and growing public health problem all over the word. To reduce the burden of foodborne diseases, appropriate mitigation strategies should be implemented, and their efficacy could be predicted through the application of microbiological risk assessment (MRA).
MRA provides a methodological framework to integrate monitoring and epidemiological data of a specific hazard, dose–response models, as well as consumption data to quantify the potential risk to humans associated with various exposure pathways to that specific hazard. MRA efficaciously supports risk managers in identifying and ranking intervention strategies at the regulatory level. Moreover, MRA helps food business operators to identify foodborne hazards that are reasonably likely to occur in their processes and to develop more effective and fit-for-HACCP plans. Finally, MRA plays an important role in the context of international trade by ensuring that countries establish food safety requirements that are scientifically based and preventing sets of requirements that are not specifically related to food safety.
Quantitative MRA provides the probability of the occurrence of a risk to human health due to a specific hazard/food combination and quantifies the related uncertainties, but several technical difficulties and data gaps may limit the precision necessary for quantitative MRA. It is challenging to collect meaningful data for MRA because datasets are difficult to compare and genomic technologies are providing new insight which must be correctly incorporated—even in already available MRA.
Emerging foodborne pathogens, international trade, human migrations, diversity and innovations in food supply chains, changes to consumer habits, climate changes, and the development of novel foods enhance the need of reliable data for MRA, although the use of mathematical models to predict the fate of microorganisms in food is widespread and more user-friendly for both risk managers and enterprises to assess the ability of selected processes to control foodborne pathogens.
All stages of the food production chain, including feed production, primary production, processing, and by-products management, should be taken into account for a proper MRA, and this integrated approach is highlighted in this Special Issue.
Original manuscripts and reviews regarding the MRA of specific hazard/food combinations or aspects of it (i.e., hazard identification, hazard characterization, exposure assessment, dose–response models, etc.) along the feed, food, and by-products production chain; manuscripts concerning the risks related to a specific production process or mitigation strategy; as well as papers on suitable strategies to collect reliable data to improve MRA and reduce uncertainty are welcome.
Prof. Dr. Andrea Serraino
Prof. Dr. Alessandra De Cesare
Dr. Federica Giacometti
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Foods is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- Microbiological risk assessment
- Hazard identification
- Hazard characterization
- Exposure assessment
- Dose-response models
- Risk characterization feed
- Primary production
- Food
- By-products
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