- Competitive research and development on antimicrobials and food preservatives

Davidson and Taylor (2007) identied food antimicrobials as chemical compounds added to, or naturally occurring in, foods that act to inhibit or inactivate naturally occurring or cross-contaminating microorganisms. Most food antimicrobials utilized in the preservation of foods exert inhibitory bacteriostatic or fungistatic effects in the food product rather than lethal (i.e., bactericidal, fungicidal) effects at usage concentrations (Davidson and Branen 2005). Food antimicrobials are often applied in conjunction with other processing measures, commonly referred to as hurdle processing, for the control of contaminating pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms (Leistner 2000; Leistner and Gorris 1995). The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) denes food antimicrobials as “preservatives,” although this identier allows the inclusion of chemical additives that serve to preserve the food’s quality (e.g., butylated hydroxytoluene [BHT]) [21 CFR 101.22(a)(5); 21 CFR 70.3(o)(2)].