The Influence of Predictive Microbiological Models on Safety and Quality of Food Products – Review

Abstract

The huge health consciousness of Polish society causes citizens to look for food products of only very high microbiological quality. Such a demand has resulted in the systematic introduction and improvement of food safety assurance systems. The present study evaluates tools of predictive microbiology with particular regard to the USDA Agricultural Research Service Pathogen Modeling Program (PMP70) which is a very useful software package available at www.arserrc.gov/mfs/pahogen.htm as well as ComBase Predictor available at www.modelling.combase.cc. The application of predictive microbiological tools enables scientists to quantitatively assess the microbiological risk of the appearance of food borne pathogens in food products. The program operation is illustrated by the example of Escherichia coli O157:H7 cultivated in broth medium. It predicts the growth and behavior of the pathogen under some specific environmental parameters introduced as the input to the program. Such a tool constituting a software package allows for the prediction of growth of different microorganisms and guarantees the operation of the food safety assurance systems in food processing.