Alliance expert: Dr. Shu Chen

Profile photo of Dr. Shu Chen

Keeping disease-causing microbes out of Ontario’s food supply

Senior Research Scientist and Manager, Agriculture and Food Laboratory, University of Guelph

Protecting consumers against food-borne pathogens and illnesses requires timing, accuracy and a proactive approach. Improving food safety and quality diagnostics is the goal for Dr. Shu Chen, a senior research scientist and manager with the University of Guelph’s Agriculture and Food Laboratory (AFL). 

She and her team provide improved tools to help public health and food inspection agencies, researchers and the wider food industry better understand and manage contamination events and prevent outbreaks. 

Research focus in the agri-food sector

Chen helps keep the food supply safe and secure by investigating and developing advanced and efficient molecular methods for identifying and monitoring a wide range of food-borne pathogens. 

Make an Alliance connection

Research that's making an impact

Faster, more accurate Listeria monitoring and typing: Chen led a research team that developed and implemented a DNA fingerprinting method for Listeria monocytogenes strains. Their method allows food inspection agencies and processing plants to accurately and quickly identify subtle differences between Listeria strains and trace a contamination source before the bacteria cause an outbreak. By enabling a proactive response, the researchers’ work protects public health. 

Chen’s team has extended this approach to include Listeria innocua, an important indicator of hygiene across the food industry, to help further minimize Listeria transmission. 

Shu Chen in a lab coat working with samples in a pink rack next to an open PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) machine, with a monitor displaying samples in the background.

Advanced Salmonella detection in poultry production: Along with Dr. Carlos Leon-Velarde, food microbiology supervisor with the AFL, Chen has investigated and implemented a new, advanced molecular tool for detecting multiple Salmonella serotypes (variations) in poultry production. This new method allows the researchers to detect at least 45 distinct Salmonella serotypes at once, which will improve risk management on poultry operations across Ontario to prevent outbreaks. 

High-throughput testing method for detecting pathogens: Food-borne diseases can be caused by a long list of possible pathogens. Current testing methods can detect only one or a few organisms like Listeria at a time. Chen and her team have established a new culture-independent diagnostic test (CIDT) via high-throughput DNA sequencing. 

CIDT allows researchers to simultaneously detect all the most common foodborne pathogens in meat, seafood, dairy, and fruits and vegetables. This approach will support comprehensive pathogen surveillance in the future. CIDT is now being used at the AFL to support the detection and management of plant pathogens in greenhouses and fields.   

Highly qualified personnel training and education

Chen’s research team at the AFL includes several associated or special graduate faculty members. Most recently, the graduate students have worked on the CIDT method for detecting food-borne and plant-based pathogens, as well as pathogen surveillance in meat from provincially licensed plants.

Industry and academic collaboration 

Chen and associated researchers have recently collaborated with:

  • Public Health Agency of Canada
  • Health Canada
  • Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs
  • U of G faculty from departments of Food Science and Integrative Biology
  • Egg Farmers of Ontario
  • Biotechnology firm Illumina Canada
  • Health diagnostics solution company Hygiene

Future research directions

Chen and her team are building a comprehensive dataset on the microbiological quality and safety of pork, lamb and goat meat from provincially licensed processing plants. Their goal is to monitor for a comprehensive list of pathogens, including SalmonellaCampylobacter and L. monocytogenes, to understand pathogen prevalence, consumer risk and preventive measures. 

The AFL and Chen’s research receive funding from the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance, a collaboration between the Government of Ontario and the University of Guelph.