702 Part VII: Food Safety
critical control points, and (3) HACCP verification.
The reliance on testing of finished food products
alone is a thing of the past. The challenge to food
microbiologists now is to develop on-line food safe-
ty testing tools that can be used during food produc-
tion. The limitation of current rapid tests for food-
borne pathogens is that they require 24 hours or
more to complete because of the requirement for
amplification of pathogen numbers to detectable
levels. The ability to detect pathogens at very low
levels within seconds, minutes, or in less than 24
hours is an important future development for food
microbiologists.
The likelihood of future increases in the incidence
of foodborne illness is high as a result of increases
in the number of susceptible aging populations, the
treatment of disease with immunosuppressing drugs,
and increases in the availability of ready-to-eat foods
requiring no further processing prior to consump-
tion. Unless steps are taken to implement food safety
programs, which can reduce microbial contamina-
tion of foods at all levels of food production, process-
ing, and retailing, and to educate restaurant person-
nel and consumers about the safe handling of foods,
outbreaks of foodborne illness will continue to occur.
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