Bacterial Pathogens in Food and Their Control by Bacteriophages

Abstract

Food safety ensures reduced food losses and therefore contributes to food security. The factors causing the contamination of the food may threaten the safe consumption and make the foods harmful. For this reason, it is necessary to utilize various resources to prevent the food from being contaminated in all stages of the food chain. Purified high titer phage lysates have been used for the species-specific control of bacteria during the pre and postharvest phases of food production and storage. This chapter presents recent advances in bacteriophage research and their application in the area of food safety. Some of the components of this chapter are general facts on phage biology that are relevant to their application for control and detection of bacterial pathogens in food and environmental samples, application of bacteriophages to control growth of bacterial pathogens and spoilage organisms in food and food processing environment, detection and identification of bacterial pathogens, and advantages of bacteriophage-based methods and their shortcomings.