Several professors and students have raised important questions about modern day food safety and the transmission of food-borne diseases through extensive research efforts about the topics done at NC State in recent years.

The research, such as the work conducted by Frederick Breidt, a professor and microbiologist in the department of food bioprocessing and nutrition, has garnered national attention and has been used by the Food and Drug Administration.

“There is a lot of food safety work going on here,” Breidt said.

For the last 10 years, Breidt has been working on the safety of fermented and acidified foods, publishing about 20 papers about the processing conditions needed to assure vegetable bacterial pathogens are killed in a variety of vegetable products, primarily acidified food products. 

Breidt’s papers have been used by the FDA, the federal department that regulates food production and ensures safe practices. 

“We’re trying to work with the FDA to establish food regulations that make sense and our based on science, not politics,” Breidt said.

Right now, Breidt has one of his Ph.D students working on probiotics survival in pickled vegetables and has one student working on acid resistance of E. coli O157:H7, an extremely acid-resistant microorganism. The students will be presenting their work at the upcoming American Society Microbiology meeting this year.

“These pathogens are very difficult to get rid of because E. coli comes from cows in particular, and we have a lot of cows in this country,” Breidt said. 

One hundred years ago, understanding food safety was much simpler. The food system that we use now to feed the population is enormous, Breidt said. 

 “Food safety was not as much of an issue even though we had less in the way of knowledge and less in the way of refrigeration because people were closer to farms,” Breidt said.

Today, if a customer buys produce from a nearby grocery store, it could have come from Columbia or Argentina, or even somewhere farther. The way the food supply is changing and adapting to this need to feed so many people creates new ecological niches for bacterial pathogens. 

“The food supply chain is big and getting bigger,” Breidt said. According to Breidt, researchers must take that into account and try to figure out where the opportunities for these pathogens are before these new economical niches for bacteria evolve and become unpredictable.  

“It’s going to take us a very long time to solve it, but as soon as that’s solved, we’ll have other questions because the conditions would have changed by then,” Breidt said. 

The bacterial pathogens that Breidt and his team are studying are known to cause serious illness and death, and the E. coli that Breidt works with closely, kills children. 

“When you go to the grocery store you want to have the confidence that the food you buy is going to be safe,” Breidt said. 

There are several other scientists at NC State working to ensure food safety, such as Sophia Kathariou, a professor of food science and microbiology, and Lee-Ann Jaykus, a professor of food science, among others. 

Kathariou is currently studying bacterial pathogens, such as listeria, and the genetic pathogenicity of those organisms. The pathogenicity refers to the ability of an organism to cause disease.

Jaykus is researching how the Norovirus, the most common cause of food-borne illness, is spread and how to prevent it. Norovirus spreads quickly from one person to the next through contaminated food and water.

“Any time you can try to prevent people from getting sick from contaminated food, you’re improving public health and in turn improving people’s lives,” Jaykus said. 

To prevent the spread of the Norovirus, people should wash their hands carefully before preparing food and be sure to rinse all fruits and vegetables, according to Jaykus.

Several food researchers at NC State participated in writing a series of articles on food safety for University Communications leading up to World Health Day on April 7. Posters included Danisha Garner, a graduate student studying food, bioprocessing and nutrition sciences; Hannah Bolinger, a graduate student studying food, bioprocessing and nutrition sciences; Liz Bradshaw, a postdoctoral research scholar in NoroCORE—the Norovirus Collaborative for Outreach, Research and Education; and Kathryn Boys, an assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics at NC State whose research focuses on food systems and food safety policy.