Innovative Bio-interventions and Risk Modelling Approaches for Ensuring Microbial Safety and Quality of Mediterranean Artisanal Fermented Foods – ArtiSaneFood

The objective of this project is to develop efficient bio-intervention strategies, enhanced process criteria, monitoring and sampling schemes, and an easy-to-use food safety decision support IT tool for participating artisanal food producers, aiming to the reduction and control of food-borne pathogens in 15 artisanal fermented foods of meat or dairy origin produced in Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. The project will be developed through an integrated risk-based approach sustained by the concepts of (i) extensive tracking surveys in the artisanal food chains, in order to identify origin, routes of contamination, risk factors favouring pathogens’ survival, and technological causes for lack of homogeneity in the quality/safety of end-products; (ii) bio-preservation, whereby functional starter cultures and natural antimicrobial extracts will be assessed as extra hurdles to ensure safety and extend shelf-life, hence reducing chemical preservatives and waste; (iii) fate studies of pathogens, and (iv) dynamic modelling, in order to mathematically describe the growth and survival kinetics of pathogens, as affected by the food’s intrinsic properties and the enhanced manufacture variants (i.e., biopreservatives and alternative process variables); and (v) risk process modelling, for the delineation of the most effective bio-interventions, optimisation of process variables and norms/standards, and design of quality monitoring tools. A safety decision support IT tool, assembling all project’s outputs, will be developed to enable artisanal producers to assess the lethality of traditional and biopreservation-based manufacturing processes, and generate sampling schemes and control charts upon their current and target safety levels. The implementation of bio-interventions and optimised process criteria will ensure safety and quality standardisation of artisanal foods; preventing food crisis, loss of trust and facilitating international trade.