Tracing Pathogens in the Food Chain

Successful methods for the detection and investigation of outbreaks of foodborne disease are essential for ensuring consumer safety. Increased understanding of the transmission of pathogens in food chains will also assist efforts to safeguard public health. Tracing Pathogens in the Food Chain reviews key aspects of the surveillance, analysis, and spread of foodborne pathogens at different stages of industrial food production and processing.

The first section of this work provides an introduction to foodborne pathogen surveillance, outbreak investigation, and control. The second concentrates on subtyping of foodborne pathogens, with chapters on phenoytypic subtyping, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, and other emerging methods. The vital topics of method validation and quality assurance are also covered. The focus in the third section is on particular techniques for the surveillance and study of pathogens, such as protein-based analysis, ribotyping, and comparative genomics. Finally, the fourth section focuses on tracing pathogens in specific food chains, such as red meat and game, dairy, fish, and shellfish.