MI3041:03
Food Microbiology
| Townsville | HECS Band 2 |
30 hours lectures, 33 hours practicals. Semester 2.
Staff: Assoc. Professor W Shipton.
This subject aims to introduce students to the fields of food and environmental microbiology. Topics include infectious, toxinogenic and parasitic microorganisms as agents of food-borne illness, origins of microbes associated with different food groups, factors affecting their growth and survival in these food groups, methods of detection of microbes in food and water, food preservation and fermentation, basic concepts in microbial ecology particularly applicable to food microbiology, the involvement of microbes in biogeochemical cycles and the impact of these cycles on the environment and human health. Students are also made aware of the importance of quality control, including HACCP and the legal implications involved with food safety in the food industry.
This subject should be considered by aquaculture students, as well as biomedical science, medical laboratory science, public health and any student wishing to study microbiology as a major discipline or with an interest in food safety.
Learning Objectives:
- recognise the diverse activities of microbes in the ecosystem and the consequences of their activity;
- appreciate the strategies enabling control of microbial growth in food;
- understand the current status of microbial agents associated with food illnesses;
- manipulate microbes in the laboratory and establish levels of contamination of selected microbes in food and water;
- measure parameters that are indicators of microbial water quality;
- understand the methods of isolation and identification of microbes associated with foodborne illnesses.
Assessment by laboratory assignments (25%); essay (10%); examination (65%).