Microbial contamination of food is almost inevitable owing to the ubiquity of microorganisms – which are found everywhere and even where life rarely exists. The soil, air, water, animals and animal products, plants and plant products, food handlers, food processing equipment and food storage vessels or platforms are some typical examples of various sources of […]
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Food Microbiology
Extrinsic factors of food spoilage are the non-substrate factors that affect the spoilage of foods and food products and which are not innately found in the foods. These factors are the environmental factors that are implicated in food spoilage occurrences. They are different from the intrinsic factors that cause food spoilage. The extrinsic factors are
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Food Microbiology
Intrinsic factors of food spoilage are those inherent factors that are associated with the food and which in several ways affect the overall physical and chemical composition of the food. Intrinsic factors are food related factors; and they are generally referred to as the physico-chemical properties of food. The composition of a particular food is
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Food Microbiology
What is food spoilage? Food spoilage is simply defined as the change in the overall appearance, taste and smell of a particular food or food products due to microbial activities. Food as earlier said in our previous posts contains nutrients that also support the growth of microbes especially those that are notorious in causing food
Key facts Foodborne botulism is a serious, potentially fatal disease. However, it is relatively rare. It is an intoxication usually caused by ingestion of potent neurotoxins, the botulinum toxins, formed in contaminated foods. Person to person transmission of botulism does not occur. Spores produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum are heat-resistant and exist widely in the environment,
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Bacteriology, Food Microbiology, Public Health & Parasitic Diseases (Parasitology)
Water quality is defined as the suitability of water to sustain various uses or processes without causing any untoward effect to its users. Several human and natural factors influences the quality of water available for many industrial and domestic applications; and thus it is vital to continuously monitor water for various uses and processes –
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Environmental & Soil Microbiology, Food Microbiology, Pharmaceutical Microbiology
Active air monitoring also involve the use of settle plates or sedimentation culture plates (as is applicable in passive air sampling) and contact plates for the monitoring of air quality. It involves extracting a set volume of air within a given environment into a calibrated sampler which is then passed onto the surface on an
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Environmental & Soil Microbiology, Food Microbiology, Pharmaceutical Microbiology
Passive air monitoring is usually done using special type of Petri dish plates known as settle plates. These culture plates are standard Petri dishes (measuring about 90 mm in diameter) that containing appropriate culture media that are opened and exposed for a given time and then incubated to allow visible colonies to develop and be
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Environmental & Soil Microbiology, Food Microbiology, Pharmaceutical Microbiology
Air quality is defined as the degree to which the ambient air in a particular environment is pollution-free. It is a measurement of the amount of contaminants in the air; and it gives a description of the healthiness and safety of the atmosphere of a given area at a given time. The quality of air
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Environmental & Soil Microbiology, Food Microbiology, Pharmaceutical Microbiology
Quality assurance (QA) is a planned and systematic process used for evaluating and monitoring the quality and appropriateness or suitability of a product or given service. QA is related but different from quality control (QC). It is mainly geared towards finding a problem that is associated with a given product and managing it so that
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Environmental & Soil Microbiology, Food Microbiology, Pharmaceutical Microbiology