Microbial traceability is an important process to determine the source of contamination in the event of outbreak and industrial product development, and supply chain integrity failure. The merging of molecular typing methods with improved surveillance networks and databases has proven invaluable in enhancing recognition, investigation, and control of food borne disease outbreaks, particularly those that are separated in space and time. However, these molecular systems and the process of microbial traceability are not always that straightforward and on occasion either fail to lead to a source or mislead to a wrong source (e.g., tomato and pepper are often victims of outbreak investigations) that not only lead to resource mismanagement and delaying the process of microbial risk management and communication but sometimes also cause huge economical adversity to the misidentified food commodities in the marketplace. This speakers in this session will address the process of microbial traceability in the industrial (product contamination) and public health (outbreak) settings, the science used in the microbial traceability (relevant molecular techniques and databases), and the root causes of success and failure of microbial traceability and how we can prepare better from the lessons learned from previous stories of microbial traceability. This knowledge can be applied for future food safety (all IAFP members) and quality (industry concern) improvement programs.

Presentations