Report of the Scientific Committee of the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) in relation to biofilms and its impact on Food Safety
Revista del Comité Científico de la AESAN publish this article
September 30th, 2010
Dominguez L., Badiola JJ., Cepeda A., Mas A., Rodriguez-Ferri EF., Zurera G. and Tellez S.
In the last two decades, it has been noted that bacteria are found not only free in the environment, as unicellular organisms, but on many occasions may be found forming part of microbial communities with an organization system more typical of colonial organisms, i.e. adhering to surfaces and embedded in ex¬tracellular matrices that they synthesize for themselves.These biological structures are known as biofilms.
The formation of biofilms is an adaptive strategy of micro-organisms that allows an increase in their possibilities of surviving in the environment and implies a new concept of “bacteria” as a unicellular organism capable of forming complex structures with inter-relations between individuals that are very close to the behaviour of multi-cellular organisms. The study of these organized microbial populations would be included as a new field of analysis within Microbiology.
The mechanism for the formation of biofilms is very complex, depending on numerous factors in¬herent to the micro-organism or typical of the surrounding medium. This fact makes it very difficult to generalize in terms of the specific characteristics of these bacterial communities and therefore complicates their understanding. Nonetheless, a consequence of the formation of these structures is that the normal methods for the control and elimination (disinfectants, antibiotics, etc.) of free forms (planktonic) of bacteria are often ineffective against biofilms.
Nowadays, biofilms are known to be not a rarity but rather represent a habitual growth form for bacteria in nature and their presence has an enormous impact on various aspects of human life with multiple health and technological implications. These repercussions are particularly important in the field of the food industry, where their control and elimination may represent a problem with a different approach than that so far applied for free bacteria. In any situation, the elimination of biofilms is a very difficult and demanding task that may turn out to be extremely expensive and complicated. In order to bring this problem under control, each industry must become involved in research and develop its own technology depending on the variables inherent to its own processes.
In summary, it is a new field of work that we have to begin to explore in all its extension in order to assess its repercussions and adopt the proposed solutions
 | Servicio de Zoonosis de Transmisión Alimentaria y Resistencia a Antimicrobianos (ZTA). Centro de Vigilancia Sanitaria Veterinaria (VISAVET). Universidad Complutense (UCM). 111 |
| Departamento de Sanidad Animal. Facultad de Veterinaria. Universidad Complutense (UCM). 111 |
