Microbial food-borne disease is still a major global public health concern. The Codex Alimentarius Commission recommended a risk analysis framework for regulation of food-borne pathogens. Risk analysis involves three elements, risk management, risk assessment and risk communication.
Microbiological risk assessment (MRA) is a systematic tool to evaluate the likelihood of exposure to food-borne pathogens and the resulting impact of exposure on consumer health. In addition, MRA can be used to evaluate the public health impact of intervention of control measures designed to prevent or reduce pathogens at any or all of the steps in our complex food production system.
Food Safety Commission, Cabinet Office Japan (FSCJ) was established in July 2003 to evaluate risk of hazard in foods. So far, several MRAs have been conducted for food-borne pathogens. For example, an MRA of Campylobacter jejuni/coli in mainly chicken and livestock products was conducted in 2009. FSCJ proposed several preventive measures to reduce foodborne disease caused by Campylobacter. However, this pathogen is still a major public health concern. The bacterial number of Campylobacter sp. is used as the regulatory value for quantitative MRA in other countries. A similar numerical regulation value for pathogens in foods using quantitative MRA will also be introduce in Japan.

抄録全体を表示

In Japan during 2016, a total of 1,139 outbreaks of foodborne disease (involving 20,252 patients) was reported to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The individual pathogens implicated were Norovirus 31.1%, Campylobacter spp. 29.8%, Staphylococcus aureus 3.2%, Clostridium perfringens 3.2%, Salmonella spp. 3.2%, Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli 1.2%, Vibrio parahaemolyticus 1.1%, and all others less than 1.0%.
Foodborne disease is caused by consumption of contaminated food when food has been contaminated with environmental microflora at the food-gathering and the food-producing periods. Furthermore, food may be contaminated with food handler's microflora at the food-processing period. When temperature control is unsuitable, the contaminated microflora will grow.
Foodborne disease is any illness resulting from the food spoilage or pathogenic bacteria, viruses or parasites that contaminate food. Common symptoms of foodborne diseases are nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps, and diarrhea. However. symptoms vary depending on the pathogen. The incubation period ranges from hours to days, depending on the pathogen and the amount of consumption. In this article, nine pathogens are reviewed.
To prevent foodborne disease, the following steps will help keep food safe: keep food clean, separate raw and cooked foods, cook thoroughly, keep food at the safe temperature, use safe water and raw materials, and do not cook if you are sick.

抄録全体を表示

Botulism is neuromuscular paralysis caused by botulinum toxin produced mainly in foods and the infant intestines. The four categories of botulism recognized in humans are foodborne botulism, infant botulism, wound botulism and adult colonization botulism. Clostridium botulinum is a species that is defined by the production of any one of seven serologically distinct toxins designated types A though G. New type H toxin that contains parts of type A and F toxins has recently been found. C. botulinum is also divided biochemically into four groups I to IV. In addition, the recent availability of genomic sequences of the toxins has been initiated, resulting in recognition of at least 40 toxin subtypes. In infant botulism cases in Japan, three subtypes in types A and B have newly been found. Foodborne botulism in Japan has involved 122 cases, mainly type E caused by consumption of typically fermented foods containing fish. These occurrences correspond to the distribution of type E spores. Recently, types A and B cases have also occurred involving vacuum packed and bottled foods. Thirty-three cases of infant botulism have been documented in Japan. The initial cases were related to consumption of honey, but causes of subsequent cases have not identified specific suspected foods. The isolates from these subsequent cases have been designated new strains as subtypes A2, B2, and B6.

抄録全体を表示

The prevalence of soil-transmitted parasitic diseases such as ascariasis and hookworm disease, which were once predominant in Japan, drastically declined from 1945 to 1970 due to various efforts, including improvement in domestic hygiene, school education, and the use of chemical fertilizers. According to food poisoning statistics from 1963 to 1997, Vibrio parahaemolyticus food poisoning was mainly caused by the consumption of fish and its processed products and was the largest cause of food poisoning in Japan, accounting for an average of 30%. However, with improvements in cold chain technology and the introduction of the Food Sanitation Act, the food standards in terms of V. parahaemolyticus contamination have improved, and it now accounts for <1% of food poisoning occurrences. In contrast, with the expansion of the cold chain network in Japan, increased incidences of parasitic diseases caused by seafood consumption have been reported.
In 1997, the Food Poisoning Surveillance Subcommittee of the Ministry of Health and Welfare warned of 14 parasitic diseases in three categories: (1) The parasitic diseases that frequently occur nationwide; (2) the parasitic diseases that frequently occur overseas and will be of concern in the future; and (3) the parasitic diseases that are infrequent but pose severe health hazards from infection. In 1999, an amendment to the food poisoning statistics creation guidelines pertaining to the Food Sanitation Act was proposed, resulting in parasitic food and drink health hazards being considered as food poisoning and thus being subjected to notification/investigation. Subsequently, in 2011, Kudoa septempunctata, a kudoid parasite (Myxozoa: Multivalvulida) in flounder, and Sarcocystis fayeri in horses have recently been designated as etiologic agents of food poisoning. K. septempunctata, S. fayeri, anisakid larvae, and other parasites were listed as distinct food poisoning agents in the manual of food poisoning statistics, requiring doctors to report cases to a public health center. Consequently, it is become possible to evaluate the actual state of foodborne parasitic diseases in Japan.
Of the 16 food-borne parasitic diseases caused by the above mentioned parasites, this article reviews 7 diseases caused by raw fish consumption such as food poisoning from K. septempunctata, which has been a recent problem; food poisoning from Anisakis larvae, which has an increasing number of reported cases; diphyllobothriasis caused by salmon consumption, which has been reported in many infectious cases; and the sporadic parasitic diseases of larval spiruriniasis, paragonimiasis, meagonimiasis, and diplogonoporiasis.

抄録全体を表示

In order to develop a new scheme of testing methods for the microbiological examination of food hygiene, we started a project of international harmonization of microbiological tests in 2005 under a grant from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and conducted research at the National Institute of Health Sciences. We organized an expert committee for developing Japanese standard microbiological test methods for food hygiene. The study group examined 30 test methods and developed 17 new finalized protocols harmonized with International Organization for Standardization methods. In the background of this project, international consistency may be indispensable to food hygiene. In 2007 the Joint FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission delineated principles and guidelines for the conduct of microbiological risk management in CAG/GL 63-2007. According to these guidelines, the microbiological test methods for a national microbiological standard for food must be validated by scientific specialists using the ISO 16140 validation protocol.

抄録全体を表示

The Codex Committee on Food Hygiene(CCFH) is an international risk management body. As a risk manager, CCFH can develop guidance documents or guidelines. CCFH has developed many Codes of Hygienic Practices and guidelines. Among them is the recommended international code of practice – General Principles of Food Hygiene (CAC/RCP 1-1969) and the HACCP Annex. CCFH often requests FAO/WHO to perform microbiological risk assessments and/or provide scientific advice. Based on the scientific advice from FAO/WHO, CCFH will continue to play a key role as the international microbiological risk manager.

抄録全体を表示

The mechanism of blue flower color development from anthocyanins is a very interesting subject. In flower petals, colored cells are usually located in the epidermis and/or the second layer of the tissue where anthocyanins are dissolved in vacuoles. Therefore, to understand the mechanism of coloration, manipulation of the colored vacuoles is essential. Hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) is a very unique flower; what we call the flower is not a true flower petal but actually a sepal. The sepal color is well known for readily changing hues. In the early years of the 20^th century it was already known that the more acidic the soil and the higher the Al³⁺ content in sepals, the bluer the septal color became. To date, one anthocyanin component, delphinidin 3-glucoside, and three co-pigment components, 3-O-caffeoyl, 5-O-caffeoyl, and 5-O-p-coumaroylquinic acids, have been identified and it has been reported that all the colors from red through purple to blue developed from these same components. We were interested in this phenomenon and have tried to explain the chemical mechanisms. In this report I will review our recent studies on blue color development and color variation of hydrangeas.
We prepared protoplasts by treatment of blue and red sepals with cellulase and pectinase, and collected colored protoplasts from the reaction mixture. With a combination of microspectrophotometry and direct vacuolar pH (pHv) measurement by microelectrode, we verified that the bluer the cell color, the higher the pHv. Quantitative analysis of organic and inorganic components in colored cells clarified that significant differences were observed in the content of 5-O-acylquinic acids and Al³⁺ between blue and red cells. According to the data obtained, we mixed the components at the measured pHv of blue and red cells, respectively, and could reproduce the same color as those cells.
To clarify the essential structure for the blue complex, we designed and synthesized various unnatural co-pigments and carried out experiments of blue complex using those co-pigments. We determined that the 1-COOH, 1-OH and 5-ester in 5-O-acylquinic acid, and the catechol structure at the B-ring of anthocyanidin chromophore are essential to forming a complex with Al³⁺ to give a stable blue color. Combined with Vis, CD, NMR and MS measurements, the structure of the hydrangea blue-complex was clarified. The blue-complex exists under equilibrium between chelating and non-chelating structures having a hydrophobic interaction between the anthocyanidin chromophore and the cinnamic acyl part of the quinic acid ester.

抄録全体を表示

Soy sauce is a traditional Japanese fermented seasoning that contains various constituents such as amino acids, organic acids, and volatiles that are produced during the long fermentation process. Several studies related to constituents in soy sauce revealed that there are many complex contributions of constituents to flavor. Although these research studies identified new insights, it has been difficult to apply them to the production process because we don't know which steps are correlated with which constituents. Therefore, metabolomics, the comprehensive study of low molecular weight compounds in biological samples, was applied to investigate soy sauce fermentation.
To analyze the correlation of presence/absence of microbes (lactic acid bacterium and yeast) and constituent profiles, several kinds of soy sauces were prepared. Each soy sauce had different microbial conditions with respect to presence/absence of lactic acid bacterium and yeast. These soy sauce samples were analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) with three kinds of methods to obtain constituent profiles. The result of principal component analysis (PCA) using the 18^th week soy sauce samples showed that there are significant differences between samples for presence/absence of microbes with some new insights related to lactic acid bacterium being found.
To obtain further information of constituent profiles and microbes, microbial product were focused. Although studies regarding the correlation between microbes and aroma constituents have been performed, there are no reports about the influences of the microbial products, such as lactic acid, acetic acid, and ethanol, during fermentat ion. As a resul t , most of the aroma constituents were not produced by adding ethanol alone, confirming the participation of yeast in aroma production. Moreover, most of the measured aroma constituents changed similarly in both samples with lactic acid bacterium and acids. Thus, it was clear that the effect of lactic acid and acetic acid on the aroma profile was significant.
In this study, it was possible to obtain information regarding the correlation between constituents in soy sauce and microbes or microbial products such as lactic acid, acetic acid, and ethanol by metabolomicsbased constituent profiling.

抄録全体を表示

Fluorescence fingerprint (FF) is a comprehensive dataset which is obtained by scanning excitation and emission wavelength conditions. Multivariate analyses are employed to extract useful information from FF. This review describes partial least squares regression (PLS regression), which has often been applied to FF data. PLS regression is one of the latent variable analyses which regresses objective variables into the latent var iables t ranslated f rom the or iginal explanatory variables. PLS regression has been widely used for spectral data which typically includes more variables than the number of samples because it enables regression analysis in the dataset. Additionally, regression equations with good fit are estimated from PLS regression in general since the analysis determines the latent variables in a way that correlation of original explanatory variables and objective variables becomes high. VIP (variable importance projection) and SR (selectivity ratio) are indexes of the importance of the original variables in PLS regression. Furthermore, PLS regression tends to result in overfitting of the equation to the original data, while the number of latent variables is often optimized by cross validation methods.

抄録全体を表示

Matsutake (Tricholoma matsutake) is one of the most expensive mushrooms in the world. Its flavor and texture has long attracted the Japanese, especially the aristocracy, making them feel the autumn aroma. It normally grows in the sunny pine forests throughout the Japanese archipelago. There used to be more than 6,000 tons of domestic matsutake production in the early 1950s. However, since the 1960s, its production has been sharply decreasing, and Japan currently only produces 70 tons of matsutake. Imported matsutake fills the gap between supply and demand. For example, from 2012 to 2016, Japan imported matsutake from 9 countries, whereas, its average self-sufficient ratio was only 4.4 percent. Chinese matsutake dominates with about 60 to 70 percent of the total supply in the Japanese market. This paper will first explore two statistics, Trade Statistics of Japan and Non-timber Forestry Production Statistics, to provide general information on the matsutake industry in Japan. Second, the paper will present the development of the matsutake supply chain from Oregon in the US Pacific Northwest, to Japan to illustrate how it is dependent on several contingencies. Finally, the paper will explain the prospects of matsutake supply chain studies as a study of globalization, namely global studies.

抄録全体を表示

The cultivation technique for barley, rice and many field crops was introduced from China via Korea to Japan around 1000BC. Rice as a field crop was a special cereal for the upper classes such as peers and priests and was also treated as money. Rice was the foundation of the social economy. This system continued until the Edo Era (1868).
Rice was not a staple food for common people in those days. Kate Mesi with barley porridge and medley soup (Zousui) mixed with millet and vegetables were the staple foods for them, especially farmers in those early days. Kate was the substitute for rice in cereals (barley, foxtail millet, etc.), potatoes (potato, sweet potato, etc.), beans (soybean, Azuki bean, etc.), vegetables (Japanese radish, pumpkin, etc.), wild plants (bracken, bamboo shoot, etc.) and seaweeds (Hizikia, kelp, etc.). Large quantities of Kate Mesi were mixed with cooked foods. The staple food for common people changed from Kate Mesi to boiled rice owing to economic development in Japan in the 1960's.

抄録全体を表示