Meat Safety: Challenges for the Future

Abstract

Meat and meat products are part of the daily diet of many individuals and constitute an important economic component of the agricultural activities of several countries. Meat safety can be challenged in various ways, including by chemical residues (eg pesticides, antibiotics), disease in animals (eg transmissible spongiform encephalopathy) but, most importantly, by microbial contamination with pathogenic microbes or their toxins. The microbial world is in constant evolution, with basically infinite adaptive capacities towards the conditions that we will use to control it — all making meat safety a perpetual issue. On the verge of the new millennium, with the world population still rising, and with increasing market globalization as a result of which, meats will travel greater distances and for longer periods of time, a concerted effort among regulatory agencies, scientists and industry is necessary in order to develop novel alternatives for food preservation and to identify new investigation and detection methods for causative agents of meatborne illnesses.