Accelerated Detection of Foodborne Pathogens and Toxins: Techniques and Applications – A Review

Abstract

Pathogens associated with food and their corresponding toxins, including mycotoxins, pose a sig¬nificant threat to public health, leading to various health issues worldwide, particularly affecting infants, young children, and the elderly. The rise in foodborne illnesses highlights the crucial importance of food safety in ensuring a reliable food supply and promoting health. Timely detection of foodborne pathogens, toxins, and mycotoxins is essential for reducing the incidence of foodborne diseases. This review aims to provide comprehensive insights into the methodology for rapid detection, detailing the principles, appli¬cations, advantages, and limitations to enhance current knowledge. Conventional culture-based methods for foodborne pathogen identification are selective and are hindered by significant time demands, labor intensity, challenges from complex sample preparation, delayed results, and the need for specialized per¬sonnel. In contrast, the new emerging detection techniques such as immunological, nucleic acid-based, and biosensor-based methods offer time efficiency, reduced labor, improved accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and reliability, and are user-friendly. Recently, numerous novel techniques have been developed for the rapid identification of foodborne pathogens, toxins, and mycotoxins, transforming food safety practices. Providing rapid and accurate results is crucial for controlling and managing foodborne disease outbreaks while ensuring food safety. As the global food supply chain becomes more complex, advancing rapid and automated detection methods remains essential for safeguarding food safety and quality, as well as enhanc¬ing public health.