Safety of traditional fermented sausages : research on protective cultures and bacteriocins

The development of protective cultures, having the ability to optimise the fermentation and ripening processes and also to improve the safety and traditional 'sensory type', is the main aim of the project. To achieve this is needed to: -isolate and identify the predominant 'wild' strains of the traditional fermented sausages, - select strains according to their safety, sensory and technological properties, - validate with experimental and industrial trials the selected strains as well as the selected bacteriocins (in combination with commercial starters), as possible protective compounds. The expected results are the collection of high quality bacteriocinogenic lactic acid bacteria (or their bacteriocins in purified form) with the desired technological properties and active against pathogenic bacteria.