Optimising food process and formulation through Sym'Previus, Food safety Management

Sym’Previus network gathers expertises in predictive microbiology from major food companies, French technical centres and public research institutes. Based on the most recent concepts in predictive microbiology, Sym’Previus proposes an assistance in food safety management. Sym’Previus predictive tool is composed of a database and an advanced simulation software. The database provides several informations on microorganisms behaviour in/on foods as well as natural contaminations encountered in foods. The specifically developed querying system, called MIEL, allows a flexible and structured search for a given microorganism, food matrix or food category selected (Buche et al., 2005). New perspectives about this database system are presented in Hignette et al. (2007). Secondly, a user-friendly software simulates microorganisms growth in food matrix or heat destruction after industrial treatment. Sym’Previus is an easy way to access predictive microbiology tools for food companies. At the present time, the software describes the effect of temperature, pH and water activity on bacterial growth and thermal destruction in a wide range of food categories, such as cereals, egg products, dairy product, meat, ready-to-eat food. Sym’Previus simulations mainly contains pathogens species (36 strains of 4 major pathogens), but allows prediction for any other species as soon as cardinal values are known.