A Brief Summary about Analytical Laboratory Methods of Food Microbial Pathogens

Food-borne pathogens are the leading causes of illness and death especially in developing countries followed by the consumption of contaminated foods. Hence, to achieve food safety and quality, the ability of detecting pathogens in food is a necessity. This task faces many challenges, among them i) the wide variety of food products, ii) the native microflora, e.g. in raw foods, can interfere with detection and isolation of a pathogen,iii) pathogens in foods are generally present at lower levels and their infectious doses may be as low as a few cells, iv) sample preparation procedures usually requires dilution of solid samples and the detection limit is affected by sample size and assay volume. Moreover, many techniques traditionally used to extract and purify pathogens and toxins in foods suffer poor recovery rates, resulting in reduced assay sensitivity and efficiency.