Dive Brief:
- Researchers have produced genetically engineered plants that produce colicins, an antimicrobial protein, which the researchers then extract and apply to meat and produce contaminated with E. coli to kill the bacteria, according to a study published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
- Researchers engineered tobacco, leafy beets, spinach, chicory, and lettuce to produce colicins and found "a mixture of two colicins that can efficiently kill all major disease-causing strains of E. coli," Food Safety News reported. After spraying E. coli-laced pork steaks with the mixture, the presence of E. coli was significantly reduced within the hour.
- E. coli naturally produce these colicins to kill other strains of E. coli, but they tend to be so toxic that they kill the host. Researchers found that these proteins are not toxic to plant cells, and they were able to genetically engineer the plants to produce more colicins.
Dive Insight:
According to a third-party analysis, the colicin application method rivals other decontamination methods currently used by the meat industry, including acid washes and heat processing. However, the researchers say that their colicin applications are not only more affordable but also don’t affect the quality and taste of the meat, unlike other decontamination methods that use acid and heat.
"Normally the meat industry’s ready to spend two to five cents to treat one pound of meat," Yuri Gleba, CEO of Nomad Bioscience and one of the authors of the study, told Food Safety News. "Our costs are lower than that."
Gleba also told Food Safety News that "colicins are 50 times more active against bacteria than normal antibiotics." This could be a viable option for meat companies looking to move away from using antibiotics to treat the food animals that produce their meat products.
However, first the researchers must receive FDA approval for the process. While researchers are shooting for GRAS (generally recognized as safe) approval, making a case for colicins and their genetically engineered plant hosts could be difficult.
Colicins can be used to kill other types of bacteria as well, and the researchers are studying colicins' effects on salmonella, another type of bacteria that negatively impacts the food industry and leads to food recalls in the U.S.