EPOCALE PROJECT 

In the era of globalization industrial production and agriculture have to face food requirements of an increasing number of people. Food quality and safety can be affected by many kinds of contaminants such as bacterial or chemical/physical ones in any step of the production, from the field to the shelf.

On the one hand the goal of the market is cost reduction and achievement of higher profits, in some cases threating public health by accidental contamination or even by adulteration. On the other one food security and safety must be guaranteed being one of the most critical human priorities. The impact of foodborne diseases is very high if we consider that, according to the World Food Organization data, one on ten people in the world gets sick for consumption of contaminated food each year. Bacteria, viruses and parasites, or chemical substances can even kill unaware consumers. If we focus the attention on bacteria, B. Cereus is a prominent cause of concern. In fact, according to data reported in the European Food Safety (EFSA) annual reports, if we exclude Clostridium Botulinum, other bacterial toxins, including B. Cereus, represent 16-20% of the food poisoning agents, behind Salmonella and viruses. 

In Europe, from 2011 to 2015, 220-291 annual cases of food poisoning caused by B. Cereus have been reported in several countries, representing 3.9-5.5% of all annual outbreaks. A recent study conducted in France identifies B. Cereus as one of the most important sources of contamination in food.

Also, according to American studies, the impact of bacterial toxins, including B. Cereus, on food-associated illnesses, accounts for more than one million cases. Moving to Asia, a recent study reported that the 27.1% of analysed pasteurized milk on shelf in China resulted contaminated with B. Cereus.

Hence it appears clear the importance of the research in the field of sensors to detect food poisoning during production, distribution and consumption.

The detection of B. Cereus spores or cells is actually performed by plate count method analysis, while the toxin is revealed by special immunological kits or by liquid chromatography combined with mass spectrometry. The toxin genes are also currently evidenced by means of PCR-based approaches.

Official methods for the detection of B. Cereus are ISO 7932 and ISO 21871, the first one concerns direct plate counting and the second one is particularly applied for enumeration through the most probable number (for counting of low numbers).

However, following this method it is not possible to predict the production of toxins or even to distinguish between bacteria of the B. Cereus group, in fact the response is given as “presumptive B. Cereus”. Although the previously mentioned approaches have a lot of advantages such as repeatability, possibility to combine detection and quantification and analysis of a lot of pathogens in a single experiment, they are expensive in terms of instrumentation and demanding for trained persons.

In the recent years, researchers focused their work on the development of easy, user-friendly, low-cost, portable, rapid methods able to perform simultaneous analysis of pathogens in food through the realization of biosensors. It is worth highlighting that a literature review using Scopus database gave, in the years from 2015 to 2020, 27.801 in total published articles on biosensors, 7% of which concerned Food Science sensors able to reveal spoilage and adulteration of food products.

The aim of this proposal is the creation of a pilot project, for the development of a new class of sensors, low cost and portable. The exploitation of the peculiar skills of the CNR partners will allow realizing plasmonic and photonic sensors able to detect B. Cereus quantities within the legal limits that will be deposited/transferred on flexible substrates simulating smart packaging to meet the consumers demand concerning food safety in this new era.