Our food safety and quality team provides:
- increased food industry productivity and innovation
- increased market access for Australian food exports
- strategic knowledge to reduce foodborne illness in the Australian community.
How we help industry with food safety and quality
Whether you want to:
- take advantage of opportunities offered by new technology
- implement product, ingredient or process improvements
- develop new products or product extensions
- determine whether your process is sufficient to deliver a safe and stable food.
We help industry develop advantages in managing food safety and shelf-life in the manufacture of innovative food products.
We are world leaders in helping food and ingredient companies adopt emerging food processing technologies, particularly pulsed electric field, high pressure processing, ultrasonics and cool plasma, and developing applications specific to their food products.
In addition, our microbial genomic expertise helps companies track down the source of contamination in product spoilage cases or during recalls and our understanding of biofilm formation is helping the dairy industry in plant cleaning and sanitation.
Food safety and quality case study: Moira Mac’s
Moira Mac’s is a family owned meat processing business based in Bendigo, Victoria, specialising in ready-to-eat poultry products.
Consumer demands have evolved since Dean and Moira Russell first established the company in 1983. In response, Moira Mac’s has adopted high pressure processing, enabling them to develop new product lines that extend the shelf-life of processed meats without chemical preservatives or a high salt content.
We worked with the company in implementing the technology into their business as well as verifying processing conditions for the inactivation of Listeria monocytogenes in their high pressure processed chicken pieces.
Our key food safety and quality resources available to industry
Key CSIRO resources available for industry include:
- physical containment level 2 (PC2) laboratory for product contamination investigations and challenge testing to validate formulation changes and process conditions
- 3.6 litre high pressure processing unit and pulsed electric field equipment for microbial challenge testing
- 35 litre pressure-assisted thermal sterilisation unit for microbiological shelf life studies
- Department of Agriculture Quarantine Approved laboratory for work with imported ingredients and investigations into the contamination of imported produce
- confocal, epifluorescence and light microscopy for investigation of bacterial contamination
- gene sequencing expertise in strain identification in contamination of food products and manufacturing environments
- molecular typing methods (PFGE, REP-PCR, RFLP) for characterisation of bacterial strains in food products and production environments
- expertise and laboratories in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
To discuss food safety and quality innovations for your business, contact
Ms Sieh Ng
Research Microbiologist (AGRICULTURE & FOOD)
Sieh is a food safety microbiologist with a track record of assessing food safety risks to consumers and improving product safety.