Projects / Programmes
Safety of probiotics and their traceability in the food chain
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 4.02.00 |
Biotechnical sciences |
Animal production |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| B420 |
Biomedical sciences |
Nutrition |
| B230 |
Biomedical sciences |
Microbiology, bacteriology, virology, mycology |
| T430 |
Technological sciences |
Food and drink technology |
probiotics, food chain, traceability, lactobacilli, enterococci, food product, gastrointestines, microbiological methods, antibiotic resistance, virulence factors
Researchers (7)
Organisations (1)
Abstract
Besides foods containing probiotic bacteria, there is increasing amount of other probiotic preparations such as dietary supplements, over-the-counter drugs or feed additives on the slovenian market. Microbiological analysis of probiotic products often reveal a discrepancy between the number and identity of organisms actually present in the product and the information on the label. Considering the increasing interest of consumers for such kind of food in EU as well as in Slovenia, the probiotic foods field will have to be legally regulated and appropriate methods for the control of such products and their traceability in the food chain, based on molecular-biological techniques will have to be established. Enterococci also appear as probiotic quite often. The positive properties supporting their application as protective starter cultures or probiotics are their presence as a part of natural microflora of healthy humans or animals, as well in fermented food and feed and their ability of antagonistic activity against some pathogenic microorganisms. Even more known are their negative properties as some members of this genus are oportunistic pathogens and they are often cited in connection with the possibility of antibiotic resistance (vancomycin) genes transfer into other microorganisms. In the proposed research we will develop test methods for the assessment of probiotics in a food chain. Above all the properties of probiotic strains important from the safety and risk assesment aspects will be studied. A special attention will be focused on enterococci from commercial probiotic products, food and clinical samples, where the possible differences between the isolated from different sources will be evaluated. The proposed research is important from three points of view: safeguard of consumers and protection of food processing and pharmaceutical industry. The protocols for the assessment of probiotic products with lactic acid bacteria which are on the market or are still in development, will be useful for the slovenian producers for the quality control of their products, as well as they could serve as guidelines to the establishement of national legislation in this field.
