ABSTRACT
Food safety has emerged today as a very important scientific discipline to prevent foodborne illness caused during food handling, processing, storage and packaging. This has taken into consideration various additives, chemical residues, contaminants and biotechnological products, as well as pathogens, which are knowingly or unknowingly added to the food products. Food pathogens include bacteria, viruses, fungi and other parasites. Assessing food quality and safety for human health is of utmost importance because pathogens found in foods are easily transmitted to humans and produce significant damage by causing infections. Traditional methods for detecting pathogens in food include multiple subculturing and biotype identification steps that are time-consuming, costly, and laborious (Swaminathan and Feng, 1994). However, a rapid identification of the pathogen that causes food poisoning is essential for overcoming the pathogenic effects. Moreover, it has been found that a very short DNA fragment of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is identified in animals, depicting the transfer of genes from forage to animal tissue (Boldura et al., 2015). Nowadays, the incidence of food fraud is so high that it is deeply impacting governments as well as industry and consumers. An increase in adulteration with cheap ingredients or unauthenticated components raises health, safety and religious concerns. Traditionally, the methods that are used for morphological characterization of food ingredients in terms of colour, shape, texture, odour, etc., are not fruitful for processed products as processing degrades the original characteristics. Therefore, there is a need for the development of advanced identification methods that constitute the first line of defence for both detecting foodborne or fungal pathogens, GMOs and deterring food fraud. The most frequently used techniques were chromatography or spectroscopy-based methods. Nevertheless, the presence of secondary metabolites in food products affects the chromatographic and spectral fingerprints, thus causing difficulty in analysing various food types. Moreover, various methods that rely on proteins and lipids are also limited because food processing degrades the protein biomarkers.
