ABSTRACT
Foodborne pathogens are very diverse in their nature and keep causing major public health problems worldwide. Many high-risk pathogens that cause diseases in humans are transmitted through various food items. Therefore, the microbiological safety of food has become an important concern for consumers, the industry, and the regulatory agencies. Conventional pathogen detection methods largely rely on microbiological and biochemical analyses, which are highly accurate but overly time-consuming, cost-ineffective and non-amenable to integration for on-site diagnosis. Besides, successful execution of pathogen identifi cation and detection by conventional methods require extensive training and experience. Alternative rapid but accurate methods for pathogen detection have therefore been sought to overcome these limitations. Improved rapidity can be applied at each step of the analysis, i.e., the sampling process, sample
treatment and detection/enumeration procedure. Although labour-saving and automated methods speed up the processes of sampling and sample treatment, thus improving the laboratory’s output, the infl uence on the total analysis time is usually negligible due to the incubation time required for traditional culture-based methods. A real shortening of the analytical time can only be obtained if alternatives to the traditional incubation methods are developed.
