ABSTRACT
Antimicrobials may be used to improve the safety of a food product by inhibiting or inactivating pathogenic microorganisms, or to improve the shelf life of food by inhibiting or inactivating spoilage microorganisms. Selecting the appropriate antimicrobial compound would be a simple task if the only thing one had to be concerned with was the antimicrobial and the target microorganism(s). However, to set realistic expectations for antimicrobials and the outcomes of their application, one must consider many other things including efficacy against target microorganisms in the food matrix, effect of the compound(s) on sensory and physical properties of food, effect of other processing methods on activity of the antimicrobial, cost of the antimicrobial and cost in use, regulatory aspects, and truthful labeling, among other things. Thus, selecting an appropriate antimicrobial can be a complex exercise.
