Food safety may have entered a new era with this new, exciting advancement guaranteed to elevate the safety of food and lead to bigger and better discoveries and technology.

The Genome Trakr data base will make it possible to trace a foodborne pathogen back to its source more quickly and with more accuracy than the methods currently in place. Welch predicts this pathogen detection network will “transform” food safety.

Its goal is to isolate individual pathogens collected from environmental and food samples, and then compare them to pathogens collected from ill patients. This database will not only more quickly and accurately provide an assessment for the size and location of a foodborne outbreak —the process can potentially identify the single ingredient in a particular recipe that is causing the illnesses. This makes it possible to move more expediently to remove the contaminated food from commerce, meaning fewer illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths.

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