Bacteriocin producing cultures: A sustainable way for food safety improvement and probiotics with additional health promoting effects

Use of bacteriocinogenic cultures to improve the safety of food products would represent an attractive alternative to use of chemical preservatives, based on the long history of safe use of naturally occurring bacteriocin producing food-grade bacteria. Food types that mostly can benefit from use of bacteriocinogenic cultures are fermented products, whose safety is largely dependent on the microbial equilibria established during fermentation and ripening and on the antimicrobial potential of the bacterial groups that dominate the food transformation processes. The main bottlenecks for the application of bacteriocinogenic bacteria in the fermented food sector can be the limited antimicrobial spectrum, limited growth and bacteriocin production capacity in situ, inhibition of pro-technological microorganisms and the occurrence of resistant strains in the target species. In this chapter, reports on the effects of bacteriocin production in situ by bacteria in food products are summarized and the evidences for the probiotic properties of bacteriocin producers are collected, in order to identify processes and ambits in which the application of bacteriocinogenic cultures can be effectively implemented. Aspects requiring further investigation to introduce use of bacteriocin producing cultures in the food industry are also underlined.