Biofilms and Safety Design Criteria for Food Equipments

Abstract

Biofilm is the most common life phenomenon for microorganisms survived in the nature, which has been recognized in recent years. It is stronger, more and more serious harm to cleared comparing with the resistance of phytoplankton microorganisms.The inside and outside surfaces of food machinery and equipment often becomes the important places for biofilm formation due to improper design flaws or cleaning method. Biofilm formation by many sorts of pathogenic microorganisms in food equipments is a serious food security risk but people are not very aware. According to current research progress on biofilm and its effect on food equipments and food safety, safety design criteria for food machinery were proposed based on food safety and hygiene, food processing technology, mechanical design theory, material science and microbial ecology, with the aim to prevent and reduce the harm of biofilms on food machinery and their products, as well as decrease potential hazards in food safety.