Microbial Food Safety in a Global Perspective

This 6 week long course is about microbial food safety in a global perspective. Unsafe food containing harmful microorganisms cause millions to fall ill and costs billions of dollars in product re-calls. In this course you will learn how to prevent food-borne disease and food waste associated with microbial pathogens. You will learn about the occurrence, spread and transmission of pathogenic microorganisms in the food chain in a one-health perspective. You will obtain a thorough understanding of the biology of all relevant pathogens causing food-borne disease. Furthermore, you will get to take a detailed look at the bacterial genome, and how DNA-based methods, such as whole genome sequencing, have become a preferred tool in outbreak investigations. Through the course, we will discuss how food is contributing to the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and how globalization has resulted in an increasingly complex food chain. The Danish commitment to producing safe food is widely recognized and in this course, experts from the University of Copenhagen and the Danish Serum Institute will share their expertise. During the course, you will be working with:

• Foodborne diseases and food spoilage
• The kinetics of bacterial growth and how to reduce it
• The microbiota of different classes of food products from farm to fork
• The biology and epidemiology of foodborne pathogens of public health significance
• The bacterial genome and its evolution
• DNA-based methods in outbreak investigation
• The transmission of antibiotic resistant bacteria via the food chain
• Novel intervention strategies The assessment consists of a written report, which counts for 75% of your grade, and an oral exam, which counts for 25% of the grade. The report must be written in English. You can follow the course as a single course or as part of the full professional Master programme Sustainable and Safe Food Production (60 ECTS in total).

Once you have completed the course, you will be able to: describe the microbiome of different types of food products, explain the concepts of microbial growth, describe how fermentation of food influences the microbiological quality and status of the food product, introduce methods used to analyse the microbiome of food, know the reservoir, transmission pathways, and clinical manifestations associated with the major food-borne viruses and bacterial pathogens causing food-borne disease, present, interpret, and discuss cases of food borne outbreaks of infections caused by bacteria and viruses, discuss how to prevent food borne outbreaks by bacterial pathogens and viruses, describe the basic features of the bacterial genome and how it evolves, explain the molecular mechanisms underlying bacterial evolution, discuss the risks associated with transmission of antibiotic resistant bacteria via the food chain, present, interpret, and discuss the principles of DNA-based methods and how they are used in outbreak investigations, describe food policy and legislative framework in an international perspective, discuss novel tools for preventing food-borne infections and how to balance food safety and food waste, discuss the challenges to food safety imposed by the increasing globalization of the food supply chains.

Graded

You must have achieved a relevant medium-cycle education (a professional bachelor’s degree or the like) or a long-cycle higher education programme. You must have a minimum of two years of work experience in the food science and technology field. Furthermore, you must have a solid foundation in the natural sciences (biology, chemistry, mathematics) as well as an understanding of technical processes in food production lines. We recomment that you have theoretical knowledge about basic microbiology and experience from working in the field of food production.