Preface

**Section 5 The Impact of Environmental Stresses and the Virulence of**

Chapter 7 **The Impact of Environmental Stresses in the Virulence Traits of Listeria monocytogenes Relevant to Food Safety 89**

Sofia Araújo Pereira, Ângela Alves, Vânia Ferreira and Paula Cristina

**Listeria monocytogenes 87**

Maia Teixeira

**VI** Contents

The quest to ensure human safety with regard to the prevalence of foodborne diseases caused by foodborne pathogens such as *Listeria monocytogenes* necessitates the prevention and the awareness of factors that contribute to poor healthcare delivery systems. In order to provide a cost effective healthcare system with regard to illnesses caused by foodborne pathogens, the healthcare workers should know how to approach the disease by coming up with healthcare programs that would limit the spread of the disease.

Since prevention is better than cure, the methods involved in food storage, handling, prepara‐ tion, and serving could save many lives. The preventative methods could save governments and health institutions large amounts of money. The treatment of listeriosis involves the use of antibiotics, which can sometimes lead to drug resistance or multidrug resistance (MDR).

The aim of this publication is to provide well-researched up-to-date information on the foodborne pathogen, *Listeria monocytogenes*, to the readers, health practitioners, policy mak‐ ers, food industry workers, researchers, and all stakeholders involved in food safety and food security*.*

I would like to thank and congratulate all the contributing authors for their professionalism, hard work, and patience in making this book a great success. Last but not least, I would like to thank Mr. Markus Mattila, the Author Service Manager, for his role in the completion of this book project.

> **Dr. Monde A. Nyila** University of South Africa Republic of South Africa

**Section 1**

**Ubiquity of Listeria monocytogenes**

**Ubiquity of Listeria monocytogenes**

**Chapter 1**

**Provisional chapter**

**Introductory Chapter:** *Listeria monocytogenes*

**Introductory Chapter:** *Listeria monocytogenes*

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.76905

The purpose of this book is to give informative well-researched chapters to the readers, health practitioners, policy makers, food industry, researchers and all stakeholders involved in food safety and food security. The chapters in this book are from specialists in their respective disciplines. The unprecedented outbreak of listeriosis in South Africa recently from January 2017 to March 2018 [1] has made this book to be more important. This has been reported as the greatest outbreak of listeriosis in recent times because of the number of cases reported as

The book is about the foodborne pathogen, *Listeria monocytogenes*. The pathogen is of public health concern [2], which causes serious diseases such as endocarditis, encephalitis sepsis and meningitis, gastro-enteritis and death [3, 4]. Infected pregnant women suffer from flu-like febrile illness, and depending on the stage of pregnancy, it may lead to abortion. Listeriosis is a notifiable disease in most industrialised countries with few or no report from Africa. It became a notifiable disease recently in South Africa after the unprecedented outbreak. In countries where listeriosis is a reportable disease, the countries have come up with actions

*L. monocytogenes* is a ubiquitous pathogen because it is found everywhere. It has been reported [6] that the municipal wastewater effluent was a source of listerial pathogen in the aquatic environment. Surveillance in developing countries is on assumption that the cases of listeriosis are not always reported [7] and that traditional methods used for food storage eliminate means of growth of microorganisms. The outbreak of listeriosis has been widely reported in

> © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

that keep surveillance of food and food-processing plants [5].

Monde A. NyilaAdditional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76905

Monde A. Nyila

**1. Introduction**

well as the number of fatalities.

Japan, North America and Europe [8].

#### **Introductory Chapter:** *Listeria monocytogenes* **Introductory Chapter:** *Listeria monocytogenes*

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.76905
