UGA plays pivotal role in food safety

Leading university research

UGA’s food-safety research is led by its Center for Food Safety (CFS), where faculty develop ways to detect, control and eliminate harmful microorganisms and their toxins from the food supply. 

CFS often works collaboratively with members of the food industry to help them discover innovative ways to keep food safe. Through its annual meeting and other such collaborations, CFS facilitates the exchange of information to promote the production of safe foods from farm to plate. 

CFS researchers focus on four main areas of food safety, starting with preharvest, when researchers study foodborne pathogens before crops are harvested or livestock is slaughtered. Bioinformatics applied to food safety uses whole-genome sequencing, machine learning and data analytics to solve foodborne pathogen contamination issues. CFS scientists develop technologies and ingredients to eliminate or lessen the microbes found in food and the environment and, finally, they study the ecology of food microbes to learn how they survive in food and food-processing environments. 

Francisco Diez-Gonzalez, CFS director, said that the declaration of June 7 as World Food Safety Day sends a strong message that keeping food safe is an international responsibility that must be upheld by everyone involved in the food-supply chain.

“I am proud that the CFS mission aligns with the spirit of this day by advancing the understanding of foodborne pathogens and finding solutions to reduce illnesses,” Diez said.

Overlapping initiatives

UGA’s efforts to improve food safety are not limited to the research done at CFS — the work of UGA researchers in other fields often intersect. Professor Catherine Logue’s research in the university’s College of Veterinary Medicine is one example. 

Logue specializes in the detection of foodborne pathogens from food animal sources such as poultry. Keeping chickens healthy improves the animals’ well-being, helps farmers retain more birds and affects the quality of the meat. She explained that poultry health is important because the healthier a bird is, the higher quality its meat will be.

“We want the best, healthiest birds out there,” she said.

To that end, she studies how pathogens such as E. coli can be kept in check. Some of her current work looks into strains of E. coli that have become drug resistant. She is also researching ways emerging serotypes of E. coli can be identified early so farmers can be alerted to potential problems. She’s also collaborating with other UGA researchers to help create a single vaccine for chickens that may one day address many forms of E. coli. 

Consumer and producer education

Tori Stivers works at the other end of the food production chain. A public service associate in seafood safety with UGA’s Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, Stivers helps educate wholesalers and consumers about seafood safety.  

Stivers teaches wholesalers a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) seafood safety course — a food safety system that was mandated for the seafood industry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1997. All seafood wholesalers must have at least one employee certified in the course or hire a certified consultant in order to operate. 

The training helps wholesalers analyze their operations to determine where potential hazards may occur and whether they could harm consumers if they aren’t controlled. The FDA-produced manual for the HACCP course is nearly 500 pages, and Stivers teaches class participants how to use it to “determine for themselves what potential hazards are associated with their product and their processing of it, and then determine if they need to control those hazards.”