Natural products with preservative properties for enhancing the microbiological safety and extending the shelf-life of seafood: A review

Seafood is highly perishable, presenting a rapid loss of its quality soon after capture. Temperature is the critical parameter that impacts on seafood shelf-life reduction, allowing the growth of foodborne pathogens and spoilage microorganisms. In recent years, the search by additional methods of preserving seafood has increased, able to ensure quality and safety. Several natural preservatives have highlighted and gained considerable attention from the scientific community, consumers, industry, and health sectors as a method with broad action antimicrobial and generally economical. Natural preservatives, from different sources, have been widely studied, such as chitosan from animal sources, essential oils, and plant extracts from a plant source, lactic acid bacteria, and bacteriocins from microbiological sources and organic acid from different sources, all with great potential for use in seafood systems. This review focuses on the natural preservatives studied in seafood matrices, their forms of application, concentrations usually employed, their mechanisms of action, factors that interfere in their use and the synergistic effect of the interactions among the natural preservatives, with a focus for maintenance of quality and ensure of food safety.

Impact of Unit Operations From Farm to Fork on Microbial Safety and Quality of Foods

Unit operations modify material properties aiming to produce uniform and high-quality food products with greater acceptance by the increasingly demanding consumers or with longer shelf life and better possibilities of storage and transport. Microorganisms, including bacteria, molds, viruses, and parasites, may have different susceptibilities to unit operations employed during food processing. On-farm (cleaning, selection and classification, cooling, storage, and transport) and on-factory unit operations (heating, refrigeration/freezing, dehydration, modification of atmosphere, irradiation, and physical, chemical, and microbial-based operations) are commonly employed throughout food production chain. The intensity and combination of unit operations along with food composition, packaging, and storage conditions will influence on the dominance of specific microorganisms, which can be pathogenic or responsible for spoilage. Thus, in the context of food safety objective (FSO), the knowledge and the quantification of the effects caused by each step of processing can enable to control and ensure the quality and safety of manufactured products.