Efterår
November 2014
Five weeks
Class contact (lecture) 0 hours
Class contact (practical)0 hours
Specified learning (textbook) 32 hours
Autonomous learning (literature) 32 hours
Undervisningens placering:
The course is exclusively online. The communication between
teacher and students will be through CampusNet at DTU Portal. The
teaching will be supplemented through webinars at YouTube. There
will be no physical meeting or class attendance. A textbook
(published by the course teacher) will be the main reading
material. The reading will be supplemented with publications from
literature. It is important that all registered students have
access to the Internet and can be reached via
e-mail.
Undervisningsform:
The teacher will provide students with a reading assignment
once per week (five assignments). Questions will be e-mailed to
students after each assignment in order to continuously evaluate
the students and the learning process. Students will provide the
teacher with their answers in writing. The final evaluation will be
based on student’s ability to answer the questions in writing.
Please note that answers to the assignments will be shared among
all participants.
Ingen eksamen, Ingen eksamen, Passed/not passed.
In order to pass, the student must have answered 80% (4 out of 5)
of the assignments correctly. This will be judged by the main
teacher and an external censor. There will be no final
examination.
Evalueringsform:
Hjælpemidler:
Bedømmelsesform:
Pointspærring:
Overordnede kursusmål:
The main objective of the course is to educate the students in the
microbial safety aspects specific to the increasing consumption of
fresh produce.
The emergence of fresh produce as a food safety problem was not
sudden, but rather a gradual process with many contributing
factors. Among these we may include changes in societies and shifts
in family structure from single to multiple income households,
which placed great time constraints on our daily lives. This in
turn led to changes in lifestyles and eating habits, and increased
dependency on restaurants, fast foods and delis. It has also
stimulated the emergence of ‘convenience’ food industries, which
produce ready- to-eat (RTE) foods that are well suited to
consumers’ busy lives. A final factor is the healthy living
initiatives that have been implemented to reduce obesity and other
complications arising from unhealthy diets, which also effectively
promote the health benefits of fresh produce and have popularized
the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables.
The combination of these shifts and trends and other factors has
increased the demands for fresh produce and probably stimulated the
growth of the ‘fresh- cut’ industry and popularized the consumption
of RTE bagged salads and fruit cups. It has been estimated that
over 1 billion bags of salad vegetables are sold in the USA each
year. This increased consumer demand has also resulted in increased
imports and exports of fresh produce. As these products are mass
produced, broadly distributed and often marketed worldwide, a
single pathogen contamination event can have broadly impacting
consequences.
This course is based on a textbook by the teacher. The book
recognizes that each country’s fresh produce production practices
and scales of production varies, and thus each setting can have
different problems.
Læringsmål:
En studerende, der fuldt ud har opfyldt kursets mål, vil kunne:
Understand the microbiological issues related to fresh produce
safety.
Conceive risk factors and risk management strategies in fresh
produce production.
Know about certification, international regulations and food
safety practices.
Understand the laboratory practices for testing fresh
produce.
Obtain some knowledge on the innovative technical solutions in
the production stage.
Have an overview of pathogens that are usually involved in
fresh produce outbreaks.
Understand the safety problems from a regulatory outset.
Find relevant case studies for different
situations.
Kursusindhold:
The studies will be organized in five following themes over 5
weeks:
• Theme I focuses on the farm, the various problems associated with
large- scale production, problems of contamination by animal wastes
and existing produce legislation in various parts of the world.
• Theme II examines the impact of environmental factors on produce
safety, such as irrigation water quality, effectiveness of washing,
the use of sanitizers to minimize the spread of contamination and
risk assessment of microbial and chemical contamination of fresh
produce.
• Theme III looks at some novel approaches and treatments that may
be implemented to improve the safety of fresh produce, such as
packaging practices and biocontrol. Also included in this section
is a chapter describing the use of e- beam irradiation, which is
generated from electricity and may have potential applications in
post- production treatment of various types of products, including
sprouts.
• Theme IV presents the testing schemes that have been implemented
by the produce industry in response to outbreak incidents, the
approaches being planned by some foreign governments, novel
approaches to testing fresh produce, problems with viral
contamination and the testing of specific bacterial pathogens in
produce, which all present unique logistical problems.
• Theme V presents a case study of actual produce outbreak events,
such as sprouts outbreaks in the USA and the O104:H4 outbreak in
the EU.
Litteraturhenvisninger:
Text book: Global Safety of Fresh Produce: A Handbook of Best
Practice, Innovative Solutions and Case Studies. Hoorfar J. (ed.).
Elsevier (in press).
