Microorganisms are of significance in food systems because they have both adverse and beneficial effects - they can cause spoilage and illness, but they are also used to produce a variety of foods through fermentation.
At Virginia Tech, food microbiology research is concerned with basic and applied studies of foodborne pathogens, microbiological spoilage, prevention and control of contamination during processing, thermal and non-thermal processing, and method development to detect microorganisms and their toxins.
Recently, food safety research has focused on control of major foodborne pathogens in primary agriculture production and processing through the application of new and traditional processing technologies, antimicrobials, sanitation, HACCP based strategies and analytical methodology.
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