Offerings
View how MI5041 is offered in 2004
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MI5041:03

Food Microbiology

Townsville

HECS Band 2

30 hours lectures, 6 hours tutorials, 60 hours practicals. Semester 2.

Staff:

Assoc. Professor W Shipton.

Microbes as agents of food-borne illnesses; the role of infectious, toxigenic and parasitic microorganisms and methods for their detection. Origin of microbes associated with food; factors affecting their growth and survival in food, food preservation, fermented foods, quality control. Basic concepts in microbial ecology particularly applicable to food microbiology. Involvement of microbes in the biogeochemical cycles and the impact of these cycles on the environment and human health.

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%); assignment (15%); examination (60%).