Food Safety Monitoring through Odor Analysis

In studies conducted for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it was estimated that approximately 48 million new cases of food-related illness, resulting in 3,000 deaths and 128,000 hospitalizations, occur in the United States annually. These estimates, although lower than previous estimates, confirm that foodborne illness continues to be a problem. Together with the mortality and quality-of-life costs, foodborne illness places a tremendous burden on our society. It is even more of a burden in developing countries. There is no doubt that there is a need for low-cost, rapid detection of micro-organism in our post-harvest food processing and distribution network.Bacteria, as well as fungi produce VOC signatures that are a product of primary and secondary metabolism pathways, thus providing a means for quick, reagentless testing for foodborne pathogens. This proposal is responsive to the USDA SBIR Program Priorities as it addresses the need for a quick (minutes), point-of-test analysis for critical food borne pathogens.The Phase I efforts will provide the information needed to prove the feasibility of detecting foodborne pathogens on representative foods (spinach and netted cantaloupe) for two common foodborne pathogens (Shiga toxin producing E. coli and Listeria). We will measure the odor signatures from these inoculated samples against clean, non-inoculated controls. In parallel we will perform PCR and microbiological tests that are generally accepted protocols for measuring activity of these foodborne pathogens on these food types. The Phase I effort will demonstrate technical feasibility by establishing the level of detection of foodborne pathogens on food types that have a history of contamination with these pathogens in our food supply chain. The pathogens were also selected as there were among the most costly and common foodborne pathogens and are also of specific interest to USDA. The Phase II effort will expand our effort to include salmonella and campylobactor species. We will also develop an engineering prototype EZKnowz & trade; sensor platform that is optimized for food safety applications. One goal will be to achieve sampling and analysis time to less than 2 minutes.Should our program be successful, the technical benefit will be a low-cost, hand-portable, field-ready instrument that can provide fast (2 minute) and reliable (as compared to currently acceptable techniques) sensor for common foodborne pathogens. We will initially focus on bacterial pathogens but this could be expanded to viral pathogens as well. The economic benefit will be a tool that can be used in finding and managing foodborne pathogens at all levels of the food production chain, from field analysis to post-harvest distribution and sale. Even a decrease of 10% in the number of foodborne illness cases can lead to billion (USD) in savings an improved quality of life. It will even save lives.Benefits outside of food safety include recent studies which have shown the EZKnowz & trade; to be a potentially significant new technologyfor detecting multidrug-resistantpathogensin clinical as well as hospital-acquired infections, accuratelyidentifyingnosocomialpathogens.