What if you could see the entire microbial ecosystem in your food production?

Traditional microbiological testing often focuses on a limited number of organisms and relies on cultivation. In reality, a large part of the microbial community remains invisible using these methods.

With OMNI Track®, we apply metagenomic sequencing to reveal the complete microbial profile in food and food production systems – including bacteria, yeasts, and moulds that cannot be cultivated.

 

This opens new possibilities for food producers and hygiene teams, including:

• Identification of contamination sources
• Optimise hygiene in production environments (e.g. surfaces, air, water)
• Raw material, ingredient quality assessment and compositions of cultures
• Monitoring of fermentation processes
• Shelf-life and spoilage investigations
• Product development and challenge tests

 

Instead of looking for a few specific microorganisms, OMNI Track® provides a species-level overview of the entire microflora. We offer the service in any kind of food matrices.

The solution is available both as a service performed in our laboratory and as a fully implemented analytical method in your own lab (OMNI Track Pro®).

If you work with food safety, hygiene monitoring, or product quality, we would be happy to discuss how microbiome analysis could support your work.

For more information please contact senior project manager Hans-Christian Ingerslev: e-mail: hci@isifoodprotection.com or by phone: +4551736718.

Enhancing our capacities within metagenomics

We are pleased to welcome two new employees to ISI Food Protection: Gitte Holm Støve (laboratory technician) and Hans-Christian Ingerslev (senior project manager).

Gitte brings many years of experience as a laboratory technician, with a strong experience in microbial- and molecular methods from various companies.

Hans-Christian holds a PhD from the Technical University of Denmark and has extensive experience from both academic and industrial industry. His experience spans molecular analysis at the DNA, RNA, and protein levels, and he has a solid track record in project management, personnel management, laboratory operations, method development, and microbiome profiling using technologies such as NGS and qPCR.

At ISI Food Protection, Gitte and Hans-Christian will focus on microbiome profiling through our OMNI Track ProTM analysis platform, where they will play key roles on its further development.

We are excited to welcome Gitte and Hans-Christian to the team and look forward to the collaboration.

Get the full microbial picture with OMNI Track Pro

Your in-house microbial analysis platform for results in hours, not days

Ready to empower your business with an in-house platform that can analyse the entire microbial population in less than 12 hours?

OMNI Track Pro from ISI Food Protection is your opportunity to take control of food safety and quality assurance in your processing plant. That allows you to act fast on risks, make better, safer products and minimise expensive downtime – benefiting your brand and your business.

Overcome the limitations

Many food manufacturers continue to rely on traditional cultivation methods to detect the microflora in food products and production. The challenge is this approach does not give a complete overview of the microorganisms present. And it often takes several days to get the results.

Metagenomic analysis overcomes the problem by providing a precise profile of the entire microbial population.

But, when you outsource these analyses, it can still take a week for business-critical results to come back from the lab. There’s also the risk that sample integrity may be compromised in transit.

Imagine the convenience if you could conduct your own metagenomic analyses on site.

Establish your in-house capability

OMNI Track Pro equips you to do just that – bringing the speed and precision of metagenomic analyses to your own lab facility. So you can get results in hours.

Drawing on our long experience with metagenomic analysis, we’ve designed a starter pack to help you on board the latest sequencing technology. Comprising four key components, it swiftly adapts to your needs.

• Hardware
  We provide comprehensive guidance on how to equip and setup your lab for efficient analyses with an optimised workflow
• Software
  Our tailored, user-friendly software classifies microorganisms right down to species level. Regular updates incorporate all the latest, fully tested improvements.
• Protocols
  Our step-by-step protocols come with comprehensive training in use of the technology and best practices, equipping your team to work with molecular analysis.
• Interpretation
  Our specialists are on hand to help you turn the data into actionable insights for improving processes, preventing contamination or maintaining product quality.

One solution, many applications

In-house metagenomic analyses with OMNI Track Pro create all-round value for your business, securing a fast return on investment.

Rely on your in-house platform for:

• New product development
• Assurance of starter culture efficacy
• Supply chain quality control
• Spoilage detection and prevention
• Optimisation of preservation techniques

Is it time to bring fast and accurate microbial analyses to your production site? Contact Marta Volpi at mvo@isifoodprotection.com for more information.

Various essential oils have the potential as food antimicrobials and antioxidants. A recent concept for industrial exploitation for food preservation involves the use of essential oils in the gas or vapour phase, making them applicable in packaged food to modify the atmosphere. Once optimised, this approach is seen as a promising strategy for prolonging shelf life.

In contrast to well-established assay methods for testing antimicrobial susceptibility in solid (agar disc diffusion) and liquid (MIC by broth microdilution) media, there are no standardised methods for determining microbial sensitivity to volatile compounds in the vapour phase. The ISI laboratory has recently developed a test system capable of assessing the industrial potential of essential oils (EOs) against relevant spoilage microorganisms and food pathogenic bacteria. This system allows high throughput, enabling extensive screening with a broad range of EOs to be performed, and hereby fast optimisation for industrial exploitation.

Please feel free to contact us if you would like to learn more about this.

The market for plant-based food alternatives is expanding rapidly, both in new product types and in total volumes.

Sales of plant-based foods in 2022 grew by 6.6 % in U.S. and by 6 % in Europe, and 21 % from 2020 to 2022 in Europe (GFI Europe). To date, hybrid products consisting of meat and plant protein blends are also becoming more attractive among consumers, and new products are being developed to reduce consumption of proteins from animals.

The new products being developed also bring new challenges in terms of safety and stability over shelf-life.

We, at ISI Food Protection, provide modern sequencing techniques to detect the entire microbial population in food products, to help you with optimising product formulation and accelerate product development.

Molecular DNA-based sequencing analyses of bacteria associated with plant material are often confounded by the presence of chloroplastidial DNA, i.e., abundant DNA from the plant chloroplasts which resembles and outcompetes the bacterial DNA. To overcome this, scientists at ISI Food Protection developed a customised protocol which blocks the amplification of chloroplastidial DNA with the goal of enhancing amplification of the bacterial community.

We develop and customise our methods to respond to new market trends, to provide the most informative results for our customers.

Please get in contact with us if you would like to know more about what we can do.

Since 2013, ISI Food Protection complements classical microbiological analyses of the microbial microflora with more advanced molecular tools to provide the most accurate picture of the population of bacteria, yeasts and moulds in a sample.

Independent of cultivation, by direct extraction of the whole DNA present in the sample, targeted metagenomic analyses provides rapid identification of all the microorganisms present in the sample.

Thanks to more than 10 years of experience in this field, we have collected an enormous amount of data and gained tremendous knowledge in the interpretation of the microflora in food and feed samples. Our experience enables us to keep up with the advances in new sequencing technologies for metagenomics: we are leading the transition of the analyses in the food sector from next generation sequencing methods to third generation sequencing methods.

Third generation sequencing methods (as the Oxford Nanopore sequencing Technology) have minimal sample processing, smaller equipment and increased sequencing speed, thus decentralising sequencing and opening the door to on-site metagenomics analysis. When established directly along the production line, new sequencing methods allow for rapid identification of the microflora and faster interventions in the supply chain, increasing the awareness of quality of raw materials and ingredients.

 

Please get in contact with us if you would like to know more of what we can do.

ISI Food Protection has implemented a new qPCR method for the qualitative detection of botulinum type A, B, E and F neurotoxin-producing Clostridia (Clostridium botulinum, C. baratii and C. butyricum) using real-time PCR instruments.

This method has been accredited by DANAK. This means that we have two accredited methods for the detection of Clostridium botulinum:

• Foodproof® Clostridium botulinum Detection LyoKit produced by Biotecon Diagnostic
• SureFast® Clostridium botulinum Screening PLUS produced by CONGEN

Clostridium botulinum is an anaerobic, endospore-forming, Gram-positive bacterium, which can cause botulism. Botulinum toxins are the most potent bacterial toxins known and may occur in inadequately preserved foods, such as canned or cured meat. Children are especially vulnerable and can become seriously ill after consuming food contaminated with spores, such as honey or milk powder.
The Foodproof Clostridium botulinum Detection LyoKit detects all human-relevant toxin genes – types A, B, E and F – in a single multiplex real-time PCR reaction.

New trends including banning of nitrite and substitution of animal protein with plant-based raw materials inherently give a higher risk caused by Clostridium botulinum. ISI Food Protection has implemented cost-effective in vitro testing systems for screening of potential preservatives for their antimicrobial potency against C. botulinum strains. The methods include MIC, MBC, as well as FIC assays.

Following the screening, further development and documentation can be provided in food models, and finally in pilot-scale challenge tests.

Biopreservation with protective cultures is a strong alternative to other preservation technologies. After having worked in this field with development of solutions for fermented meat and dairy products, we are now expanding to use in non-fermented foods, where the opportunities are vast. Currently we are running a screening program aimed at finding suitable candidate strains for ensuring both safety and shelf-life of fresh-cut vegetables.

Please get in contact with us if you would like to know more about these exciting biopreservation strategies.

ISI Food Protection is participating in the 11th Nordic Seaweed Conference which is being held in Grena, DK on October 12 and 13, 2022.

We are involved in several projects regarding the use of algae in food and feed and the development of new products where seaweed is an essential ingredient.

At this congress we will share knowledge and ideas with other scientists, laboratories and producers and develop contacts with new business partners. The participation in this congress reflects the focus of ISI Food Protection on supporting the development of new sustainable food and food products and thus be a valuable business partner for our customers within the food industries.

(https://algecenterdanmark.com/nordic-seaweed-conference/)