Bacteriophages as Biocontrol Agent in Food Safety

John Tang, Yew Huat and Ga, Yarn Wai and Son, Radu (2018) Bacteriophages as Biocontrol Agent in Food Safety. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7 (4). pp. 10-18. ISSN 2227-524X

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Abstract

Food contamination with pathogens has been continual and significant problem worldwide. These pathogens causes foodborne diseases that lead to deleterious effect to the health of consumer and the financial losses to food manufacturer. The emergence of foodborne path-ogen is further complicated with the infection from multiple antibiotic resistance food pathogens and the formation of biofilm on food processing equipment as well as utensils that cause the process of decontamination become more challenging. Bacteriophage is recog-nized for its effectiveness as biocontrol against food pathogen and relatively harmless to man. Bacteriophage can be applied at any point of the food chain such as phage therapy of livestock, biosanitizer (disinfectant) in the food processing environment, and biocontrol (addi-tives) of food products. Bacteriophage is an obligate parasite of bacterial and due to its host specificity and binding capability, bacterio-phage appear as a more advantageous decontamination agent compared to other chemical intervention which might introduce chemical hazard. Various studies have shown the effectiveness of bacteriophage in combating food-borne pathogens and insignificant risk of de-velopment bacteriophage resistant bacteria. However the efficacy of the bacteriophages varies depending on the source of isolation, the type of food, surface materials and food matrixes. Thus, it is noteworthy to get the insight of current microbiological hazard in food and the potential use of bacteriophages as biocontrol agent.

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