Salmonella spp. in low water activity food: Occurrence, survival mechanisms, and thermoresistance

Abstract

The occurrence of disease outbreaks involving low‐water‐activity (aw) foods has gained increased prominence due in part to the fact that reducing free water in these foods is normally a measure that controls the growth and multiplication of pathogenic microorganisms. Salmonella, one of the main bacteria involved in these outbreaks, represents a major public health problem worldwide and in Brazil, which highlights the importance of good manufacturing and handling practices for food quality. The virulence of this pathogen, associated with its high ability to persist in the environment, makes Salmonella one of the main challenges for the food industry. The objectives of this article are to present the general characteristics, virulence, thermoresistance, control, and relevance of Salmonella in foodborne diseases, and describe the so‐called low‐water‐activity foods and the salmonellosis outbreaks involving them.

Metabolomics-based response of Salmonella to desiccation stress and skimmed milk powder storage

“…In food industry, desiccation and hyperosmotic treatments for effective inhibition of the growth of microorganisms are the most common methods of food preservation. However, it has been widely reported that Salmonella can survive desiccation for long periods under low water activity conditions (Dhaliwal et al, 2021;Morasi et al, 2022). Consistent with the previous work, Salmonella in this study remained stable population during the dehydration treatment and SMP storage, which indicated that Salmonella had developed adaptability to low moisture conditions.…”

“…However, during the storage in SMP, Salmonella activated long-term adaptive responses by regulating more kinds of metabolites, such as amino acids, nucleic acids, fatty acids, carbohydrates, inorganic salts, organic acids, peptides, lipids, and others. This illustrated that complicated regulation mechanisms of Salmonella were present during its adaptation in LMFs (Morasi et al, 2022). A detailed profiling of all DEMs obtained from the aforementioned between-group comparisons for all three groups (i.e., the 0-, 24 h, and 3-month samples) was shown in Supplementary Figure 6, which exhibited clear changes of metabolite pattern in either the desiccation group or the storage group when compared with the 0-samples.…”

Dry surface biofilms in the food processing industry: An overview on surface characteristics, adhesion and biofilm formation, detection of biofilms, and dry sanitization methods

“…These biofilms may be persisting and be surviving for years on the food processing surface (Bourdichon et al., 2021). In recent years there has been an increase in recalls and outbreaks linked with LMFs, such as condiments, chocolates, dry dairy, dry infant foods, dried meats, flour, honey cereal, seeds, sesame seed‐based products, nuts and nut butters, peanuts, peanut butter, and almonds (Bourdichon et al., 2021; Hertwig et al., 2022; Morasi et al., 2022).…”

Effectiveness of Ultra-High Irradiance Blue-Light-Emitting Diodes to Control Salmonella Contamination Adhered to Dry Stainless Steel Surfaces

“…Several studies have shown that Salmonella has the ability to tolerate desiccation stress, allowing it to survive in LMFs and their processing environments for lengthy periods of time [ 5 , 6 , 7 ]. Furthermore, Salmonella cells subjected to dry conditions become more heat-tolerant [ 7 ].…”