title: Food safety and security: what were favourite topics for research in the last decade?
abstract: The world is faced with the challenge to feed an estimated 9 billion population of the Earth by 2050. To address the scientific evidence for the safety of food, I searched the Web of Science bibliographical and citation database for most cited articles from this research area. The topics with greatest impact on the research community, judged by their annual rate of citations during the last decade, were food-borne pathogens and toxins, with emerging genetic studies and new methods of visualising toxins on surfaces. Epidemiological and survey studies demonstrated that there was systematic effort to document, rapidly detect and control epidemic spread of disease and that these measures decreased the threat to food safety in developed countries, but that there is still much room for improvement. Research relevant for developing countries included the potential molecular targets to alleviate accumulation of arsenic in rice. As in other areas of research and life, human factor seems to be the most important one for the safety of food. The five keys to safer food of the WHO - keep clean, separate raw and cooked, cook thoroughly, keep food at safe temperatures, use safe water and raw materials - are thus still very relevant for the developed as much as the developing world.
authors.affiliation: Croatian Centre for Global Health and Department of Research in Medicine and Health, University of Split School of Medicine, Split, Croatia.
authors.forename: Ana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Marušić