On November 13th 2019 was published Biofilms Formed by Pathogens in Food and Food Processing Environments (Grigore-Gurgu L, Bucur FI, Borda D, Alexa EA, Neagu C, Nicolau AI), chapter in Bacterial Biofilms, IntechOpen, ISBN: 978-1-78985-900-3, Print ISBN: 978-1-78985-899-0.
DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.90176.

On the 31st of October the members of the SafeFood Consortium visited Cris-Tim, a renewed Romanian cold meats company, at its premises from Filipeştii-de-Pădure in Prahova County. The company decided some years ago to produce clean label products and to accomplish this goal by using high pressure processing (HPP) to assure the safety of the products it made. The members of the SafeFood Consortium discussed with the company specialists in order to better understand the challenges of applying an alternative technology as HPP and to be able to come up with a proposal of reducing operating costs while not compromising food safety.

From the 29th to 30th of October 2019, the members of the SafeFood consortium met at Ambasador Hotel in Bucharest to present their scientific results and decide how to disseminate them. The possibility to continue to work together was also discussed. Most probable, the consortium will apply to another call for research projects.

Leontina Grigore-Gurgu presented From Gene Sequencing to Protein Expression in High Pressure Treated Listeria monocytogenes at the symposium EuroAliment (5-6 September 2019, Galati, Romania). This presentation was based on the collaboration existing between our team and the group participating in the SafeFood project from the Institute of Biotechnology of the University of Helsinki: the 'DNA sequencing and Genomics Lab' leaded by Petri Auvinen.

Our collaboration with the SafeFoodgroup from the Faculty of Pharmacy in University of Porto has materialized in a paper entitled Multiple molecular components of Listeria monocytogenes affected by high pressure processing treatments: Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy insights. This paper was presented at the 8th Congress of European Microbiologists - FEMS2019 - which was held in Glasgow, Scotland (7-11 July 2019). FlorentinaBucur represented our team to this scientific event, a unique forum for interdisciplinary dialogue and discussion between all microbiological specialties ranging from basic research to applied and across all sectors - academic, policy, business, educational and communications.

A paper entitled “Systematic review of the Listeria monocytogenes σ^B regulon supports a role in stress response, virulence and metabolism” authored by Yichang Liu, Renato H Orsi, Ahmed Gaballa, Martin Wiedmann, Kathryn J Boor and Veronica Guariglia-Oropeza, which was published in Future Microbiology, is citing our paper “Resistance of Listeria monocytogenes to Stress Conditions Encountered in Food and Food Processing Environments”.

You can see the paper following its DOI: 10.2217/fmb-2019-0072

On the 19^th of June 2019, the UEFISCDI representatives, Mrs. Claudia Murea and Mrs.Olivia Puiu, visited our team to see how the work is progressing in SafeFood and if delays are forecasted.

The actual working stage was presented by Anca Nicolau, the institutional responsible of the project, then discussions continued with contribution of the project members: Daniela Borda, Leontina Grigore-Gurgu and Florentina Bucur.

With this occasion, a visit of the premises where the project activities are performed was paid. The project monitors visited the BSL2 Microbiology Laboratory, the Pilot Station for Alternative Technologies, where the HPP (High Pressure Processing) equipment is located, and the Microscopy Laboratory, where Vasilica Barbu, another member of the project, explained how distinction between viable and non-viable cells can be made using CLSM (Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy).

Florentina Ionela Bucur, who is the youngest member of our team, was doubled awarded at the Scientific Conference of Doctoral Schools - Perspectives and challenges in doctoral research (Galati, 13-14 June 2019) for her contribution to the research that was orally presented under the title “Listeria monocytogenes Survival and Recovery Capacity in Cucumber Juice after High Pressure Treatment” (see the abstract at http://www.cssd-udjg.ugal.ro/index.php/abstracts-2019).

The awards she received are The 1^st Prize of the Section 3 of the conference (Progress in science, engineering and management of agriculture and food bio-resources, subsection Food science and engineering of bio-resources) and the “Prof. G.M. Costin” Award, which was instituted by Carmen Ionela Moraru, professor at Cornell University, NY, USA, with the administrative support of The Association of Dairy Industry Specialists from Romania (ASIL), to celebrate the memory of a former professor at the Faculty of Food Science and Engineering from the “Dunarea de Jos” University of Galati.

Anca Nicolau, Daniela Borda and Florentina Bucur represented UGAL at the Annual Meeting of the SafeFood Consortium that took place from the 7^th to 8^th of May 2019 in Porto, Portugal. The meeting was hosted by the Faculty of Pharmacy from the University of Porto. This was a good opportunity to talk about project and to visit the premises of our Portuguese partner.

Our national research funding agency (UEFISCDI) announced on the 17^th of April 2019 that it will support our research for 2019 too. This year is the third year of the project and the last one.