Quality and Safety of Quebec Pork: Metatranscriptomic, Genomic and Conventional Approaches

Food safety applies to all foods, including pork. Companies and government agencies work together to ensure that food safety standards are met throughout the food chain, from rearing, through processing, to consumption, in order to minimize the health risks associated with eating meat and other foods.

Under current standards and monitoring systems, only bacteria (Escherichia coli, Salmonella, etc.) are targeted by conventional methods. Metatranscriptomic and metagenomic tools are much more inclusive and provide a more global picture of the microbiota, including bacteria, viruses, phages and parasites. The expertise of the research team, in collaboration with partners in the pork sector, will enable the development of such an approach, useful for monitoring emerging pathogenic and antibiotic-resistant microorganisms.

The aim of this research project is 1) to provide pork producers with better tools for identifying potentially pathogenic and spoilage micro-organisms (viruses, bacteria, phages and parasites) found on animal before slaughter and throughout the pork value chain, and 2) to build up a collection of these microorganisms in order to identify and characterize them so that control strategies can be developed.

Better knowledge and monitoring of microorganisms in the pork sector will provide producers, vets and processors with better tools for taking precautions in the presence of pathogenic or antibiotic-resistant microorganisms and/or emerging microorganisms.