Safety and Practice for Organic Food

Safety and Practice for Organic Food covers current food safety issues and trends. It provides detailed information on all organic and pasture practices including produce-only, farm-animal-only or integrated crop-livestock farming, as well as the impact of these practices on food safety and foodborne infections. The book explores food products that organic, integrated and traditional farming systems are contributing to consumers. As the demand for organic food products grows faster than ever, this book discusses current and improved practices for safer products. Moreover, the book explores progressive directions, such as the application of next-generation sequencing and genomics to aid in the understanding of the microbial ecology of the agro-environment and how farmer education can contribute to sustainable and safe food. Safety and Practice for Organic Food is a unique source of organic agricultural practices and food production for researchers, academics and professionals at agriculture-based universities and colleges who are involved in food science, animal sciences including poultry science, food safety, food microbiology, plant science and agricultural extension. This book is also an excellent source of information for regulators and federal government officials (USDA, FDA, EPA) and the food processing industry.

• Discusses limitations in pre-harvest and post-harvest level practices with specific information on risk and bio-security of existing organic production systems
• Explores policies and guidelines for organic food production and future directions for safer and more sustainable management
• Presents microbial and other biological hazards at pre-harvest and post-harvest levels

Debabrata Biswas is an Associate Professor of Food Safety in the Department of Animal Sciences (ANSC) and Center for Food Safety and Security Systems (CFS3) at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA. As a food safety specialist, he has committed to develop crosscutting research programs in the food safety area. He serves as editorial board member or reviewer for more than 40 journals and has published more than 70 peer review manuscripts and contributed book chapters for 12 published books. He has also mentored and trained many graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and younger scientists and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses related to food safety and gut microbiomes. He has delivered more than 40 invited talks and organized 4 international symposia in the area of food safety.

Shirley A. Micallef is an Associate Professor in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA) and CFS3 at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA. She conducts research related to specialty crops, with emphasis on the microbial ecology of the crop agricultural environment, environmental reservoirs of enteric pathogens, impact of cropping practices on enteric pathogen dispersal and survival, microbiomes of fruit and vegetables, and Salmonella interactions with plants. She has been awarded several federal and state-supported grants for her innovative research in fruit and vegetable food safety, has published over 40 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, and has organized symposia and delivered several talks on human pathogen-plant interactions. She currently sits on the Editorial Board of Applied and Environmental Microbiology and Journal of Food Protection. She also teaches courses related to food safety and agricultural microbiology at the University of Maryland.