ABSTRACT
The modern microbial food safety perspective is based more and more on “natural” antimicrobials that allow the control of the microbial ecology of foods (Verma et al., 2017b). Bacteriophages (phages), viruses that kill bacteria, are the oldest and most ubiquitous biological systems on the Earth (Chibani-Chennoufi et al., 2004; Verma and Srivastav, 2017) that are suitable candidates for the environment friendly biocontrol of foodborne pathogens. Their high specificity to target the bacterial host, ability to withstand food processing environmental stresses together with their low toxicity, and prolonged shelf life make phages a good alternative to desinfectants, antibiotics, and/or food preservatives. From the food safety perspective, phages are used to target foodborne pathogens at different stages of the food chain; in livestock they are administrated as therapy to prevent or reduce animal illness, thus preventing the entry of pathogens into the food processing environment; in the food processing environment they are used as biosanitation agents for cleaning and disinfecting thus reducing colonization and/or biofilm formation. They are also added to food products or applied on the food surface to inhibit and/or eradicate the growth of pathogenic and spoilage bacteria reviewed (Sillankorva et al., 2012; Sulakvelidze, 2013).
