On the 2^nd of April 2019, the SafeFood project was presented in front of an audience represented by members of the Romanian National Food Safety Authority (ANSVSA) and members of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), including the Executive Director of EFSA, Mr. Bernard Url, in a meeting organized by ANSVSA, which was held in Bucharest. The presentation, which was made by Florentina Bucur, one of the young researchers working in the team of the Faculty of Food Science and Engineering from the Dunarea de Jos University of Galati, revealed the aim of the project, described the consortium and mentioned the results obtained during the first two years of project’s life.

On the 26^th of March 2019, Leontina Grigore-Gurgu and Florentina Bucur participated to the Next-Generation Scientists Workshop organized in Pravets, Bulgaria, by Illumina and ELTA 90, two companies providing consumables and equipment for our project work. The topics presented by trainers were gene library preparation, sequencing and using bioinformatics tools. Our researchers had the occasion to work with bioinformatics tools allowing identification of microorganisms based on genome sequencing using the Illumina platform.

Our article "Characterization of the biofilm phenotype of a Listeria monocytogenes mutant deficient in agr peptide sensing" by  Marion Zetzmann, Florentina Ionela Bucur, Peter Crauwels, Daniela Borda, Anca Ioana Nicolau, Leontina Grigore‐Gurgu, Gerd M. Seibold and Christian U. Riedel was published in Microbiology Open (impact factor 2.682).

Use DOI:10.1002/mbo3.826 to see the paper.

Our review article "Resistance of Listeria monocytogenes to stress conditions encountered in food and food processing environments" by  Florentina Ionela Bucur, Leontina Grigore-Gurgu, Peter Crauwels, Christian U. Riedel and Anca Ioana Nicolau was published in Frontiers in Microbiology (impact factor 4.09), section Microbial Physiology and Metabolism.

Use DOI:10.3389/fmicb.2018.02700 to see the paper.

Our national research funding agency (UEFISCDI) announced that SafeFood project will receive increased financial support for 2018.

Anca Nicolau, Daniela Borda and Florentina Bucur represented UGAL partner at the Annual Meeting of the SafeFood Consortium that took place from 13^th to 14^th of September 2018 in Barcelona, Spain. The meeting was hosted by the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB). This was a good opportunity to talk about project and to visit the premises of the UAB partner.

Florentina Bucur made an oral presentation on “Applying CRISPRi system in baroresistant Listeria monocytogenes strains”at the 6^th edition of the Scientific Conference organized by the Doctoral Schools of Dunarea de Jos University of Galati, during 7^th- 8^th of June 2018, in Galati, Romania.

With this occasion she talked about the SafeFood project, which aims to reveal the mechanism that L. monocytogenes use to survive during treatments at high pressures. Her presentation was awarded the 1^st prize of the section Food science and engineering of bio-resources.

Our Class 2 laboratory received from the National Agency for Environmental Protection (ANPM) the authorization to work in containment conditions to obtain a genetically modified Listeria monocytogenes strain to establish the response mechanism that this bacterium gives to stress represented by high pressure.

Our national research funding agency (UEFISCDI) announced that the financial support it will offer the SafeFood project will be lower than planned for 2018, but it will reallocate the cut funds for 2019 or 2020.

As the HPP unit from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona broke down, UGAL partner had to undertake the experiments designed to reveal by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) what happens in Listeria monocytogenes strains after HPP treatments. Dr. Teresa Gonçalves Ribeiro from the University of Porto performed the work together with the UGAL team using the infrastructure of the TehnIA and MoRas Platforms at the Faculty of Food Science and Engineering.