The shelf-life of a product is the period of time during which the food retains its qualitative characteristics. Bacteria associated with meat spoilage produce unattractive odours and flavours, discolouration, gas and slime. There are several neglected alterations that deserve more attention from food business operators and competent authorities. Ropy slime is a typical alteration of the surface of vacuum and modified atmosphere packed cooked meat products, that causes major economic losses due to the increasingly sophisticated consumer requirements. This is a review article that aims at raising awareness of an old problem of new concern, in the light of new advances and trends for understanding the aetiology of the phenomenon, the origins of contamination and the prevention measures.

All hosts, including humans, can be infected by any one of the three forms of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii that correspond to three morphological stages: tachyzoite, bradyzoite, and sporozoite form. Felids are definitive hosts for T. gondii, which is an intracellular pathogen that infects a wide range of warm-blooded intermediate hosts. Toxoplasmosis is a disease where the interest of the diverse medical and veterinary specialties converge. Awareness needs to be increased that toxoplasmosis can induce clinical disease not only in immunocompromised patients or through congenital infections, but also in healthy patients. This is a review article that aims at illustrating why toxoplasmosis should be regarded a veterinary public health issue and how veterinary practitioners can contribute in controlling the infection.

Staphylococcus aureus is a gram-positive bacterium, commonly found in the nostrils, on the skin and on the hair of warm-blooded animals, including humans. It can produce a wide variety of virulence factors, including staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs). In literature, 24 different SEs and many variants have been identified; among these, only five (the so-called classic enterotoxins) have been well-defined. Due to their emetic activity, SEs are frequently responsible for staphylococcal food poisoning, when consumers ingest contaminated food. SEs are proteins with a high tolerance of denaturing and can maintain their activity, even when the vegetative form of the bacteria is inactivated during food processing. The enterotoxin encoding genes are found in a variety of different genetic elements and, as a result, enterotoxin production varies widely between different populations of S. aureus. SEs production is modulated by multiple, and often overlapping, regulatory pathways, which are influenced by environmental factors. Furthermore, complex food matrices possess many characteristics (storage temperature, pH, sugar or salt concentration, presence of competitive microorganisms, etc.) that have a high impact on S. aureus behaviour. The multiple factors influencing S. aureus growth in food matrices and the production of SE complicates risk assessment procedures. In this review, we focus on enterotoxin production by S. aureus in food of animal origin, its regulation and detection and on the most recent developments in predictive microbiology and risk assessment models.

Food security, as part as public health protection, constitutes one of the main objectives for countries aiming to ensure the health of all their citizens. However, food security is compromised worldwide by conflict, political instability, or economic crises, both in developed and developing countries. Conversely, because of the importance of agriculture to the economies of rural areas both in developed and developing countries, this sector can contribute to improving food stability, as well as to furthering food security. Thus, livestock and traditional meat products represent a key factor in ensuring food availability. Overall, biosecurity measures improve animal welfare by decreasing the occurrence of diseases that compromise the stability by causing fluctuations in the availability of meat and animal-derived food products such as milk, eggs, or traditional fermented products. As a consequence, an absence of biosecurity measures affects food security (in its quantitative definition, as described above) as well as the productive, sanitary, and environmental sustainability of the rural environment. Products of animal origin support local trade and the regional economy, while contributing to the availability of foods without great external dependence. The manufacture of foods of animal origin aims to create products that are durable and that maintain food availability for long periods of time, even during seasons with scarce resources. Thus, dry-cured or fermented meat products play an important role in food availability. Food security also refers to food access under healthy economic conditions; therefore, knowledge of the main tools that guarantee the safety of these kinds of food products is essential to achieving food stability and further food security.