Indagine sui processi di disinfezione nell'industria alimentare con particolare riguardo alla inattivazione virale e nuovi metodi per la ricerca di virus in alimenti

Recent epidemiological evidence indicates that enteric viruses, in particular norovirus (NV), which cause acute gastroenteritis, but also hepatitis A virus (HAV) and rotavirus (RV), are the leading cause of foodborne illness in developed countries Foods may be contaminated during cultivation before harvest by contact with inadequately treated sewage or sewage polluted water. Contamination may also occur during processing, storage, distribution or final preparation. This could happen because food is contacted by infected people, contaminated water, or fomites. However, except for shellfish, foods are seldom tested for viruses. Frequently, foodborne outbreaks are suspected of being caused by viruses but, because of the lack of sensitive and reliable methods, this suspicion can rarely be confirmed by isolation of the virus from the implicated food. Hence the safety of food products cannot be assured by testing for viruses, but can be by the prevention of contamination and the implementation of manufacturing processes disinfection that inactivate or eliminate them. The aim of this work was to assess the efficacy of some chemical disinfectant on certain enteric viruses through the kinetics of inactivation performed under experimental conditions. It will be possible to use the results thus obtained to set up time-concentration models to be applied to food processing plants. Moreover this work concerns the definition and assessment of a method to extract viruses from foodstuffs.