Leatherhead Opens ‘DirtyLab’ For Pathogen Challenge Testing

Leatherhead Opens ‘DirtyLab’ For Pathogen Challenge Testing with John Haines, Leatherhead Food Research

John has 23 years’ experience working in the clinical and food sectors, with 16 years’ service at Leatherhead working on the development, optimization and evaluation of new technologies for the rapid separation, concentration and detection of analytes of importance to food safety and
quality, including foodborne bacterial pathogens, toxins, viruses, allergens and adulterated ingredients.  Technologies for separation and concentration include SPE, immunoaffinity, magnetic separation, dielectrophoresis, free flow electrophoresis and molecular imprinting; and for detection include RT-PCR, immunoassay, microarray, optical biosensors and fluorescence microscopy.
Current work includes the development of methods for the detection of antibiotic resistant bacteria (e.g. ESBL’s) and virus (HNov and surrogates) inactivation during food processing.

Agenda:
1. Introduction.
2. What is a human pathogen?
3. How do pathogens contaminate food products?
4. What are the methods to test for these pathogens?
5. Leatherhead’s new Pathogen Pilot Plant, also known as DirtyLab, mission.
6. Which processes deliberately contaminate food products with pathogens?
7. How will this investigate micro-organisms under selected processing conditions?
8. How does challenge testing in an environment which replicates a food production areas help?
9. How does the lab assist with industry best practices?
10. Conclusion.

Contact:
John Haines
Principal Scientist
Food Safety
Leatherhead Food Research
+44 1372 822347
jhaines@leatherheadfood.com
http://www.leatherheadfood.com