Food Microbiology
After going to college for four years and obtaining your degree in microbiology one might ask themselves so now what am I going to do? Well, there are many different avenues that one could explore but my focus is on food microbiology.
The department of Food Microbiology and Toxicology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison gives student the opportunity to earn the M.S. or Ph.D. by entering the "Food Safety" speciality option in the department of Food Science. You will take a variety of courses pertaining to Food Microbiology. For example one course is Food Bacteriology which concentrates on the principles of food preservation, fermentation, spoilage, sanitation, quality control and food poisoning. Or you might be in a course called Advanced Microbiology of Foodborne Pathogens. This course teaches about infectious diseases: detection, identification, and control methods; ecology and survival strategies of pathogens in food; virulence mechanisms of foodborne pathogens.
Aside from the furthering your knowledge in the food microbiology field you can go to work at the Food Research Institute (FRI) which is also located at the university of Wisconsin-Madison. The mission of FRI is to identify and address food safety issues; so research in food microbiology and toxicology; interact with consumers, industry, regulators and academia on food safety issues and provide accurate information and expertise; and provide quality education and training for scientists in food safety field. More specifically the microbiology section of FRI conducts basic and applied research on food associated illnesses caused by bacteria, molds, and viruses. Other sections deal with diet and behavior, food allergy, diet and cancer. Also they offer expert technical advice to government, industry and other supporting agencies. All their findings are published in referred journals.
Right now on of the major issues that food microbiologists are dealing with at the FRI is hunting down E.coli. While the media began focusing on E. coli in the 1990’s, food microbiologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been concerned about it for nearly 20 years. Several years ago, a research team began a new project-hunting down E. coli. Basically they want to find out how commonly it occurs on dairy farms, where it hides and how it gets from one animal to another. The microbiologists have been conducting surveys on 70 Wisconsin dairy farms and have been taking samples of calves in hopes of learning where the pathogen lives on the farm.
So as you can see there is way more to food microbiology than meets the eye. Food microbiologists are needed everywhere especially with the public’s growing concern for food safety. Food microbiology is a career that would enable you to work hands on with bacteria, mold and viruses and how they affect the very food that we eat! Allyson Daugherty
http://www.wisc.edu/fri/whoare.htm