For centuries man has treated food to prolong its edible life, and nowadays both traditional and modern preservatives are used widely to ensure the satisfactory maintenance of quality and safety of foods. There continues to be increased public concern about the use of food additives, including preservatives, resulting from a perception that some of them may have deleterious effects on health. However, as eating habits have changed with an emphasis on what has been popularly termed a healthy diet', there is at the same time a concern that reduction in preservative usage could lead to loss of safety and protection from food poisoning. While some preservatives are coming under increasing regulatory pressure others, particularly more natural ones, are receiving increased attention and gaining in importance and acceptability.

This book supports the continued safe and effective use of preservatives within these current constraints. It therefore gives detailed information on the practical use of the major antimicrobial preservatives. Uniquely, it couples this with current understanding of their modes of action, at the levels of cellular physiology and biochemistry, in such a way as to provide a sound scientific basis for their efficacy. Such an approach also encourages the future logical development and use of preservatives.

The concept of this book arose out of an international workshop, which we organized and held at the University of Wales Conference Centre at Gregynog. The workshop was the first occasion on which researchers from all the different disciplines concerned with the extracellular virulence factors of mucoid strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in relation to cystic fibrosis (CF) had met to discuss this multifaceted problem. It was deemed a particularly timely moment to gather together experts for the exchange of facts, ideas and hypotheses. No formal abstracts were presented and no proceedings were published. But during the succeed ing months the organizers were persuaded by a number of participants that a wider audience should benefit from what had proved to be such a fruitful cross-fertilization of expertise. Thus we moved from being workshop organizers to book editors, sure in the knowledge that at least we had a willing and enthusiastic set of contributors It should be stressed, however, that this book is not a transcript of that workshop. Not all those participants are authors, and some new names have been added. Instead we have focused on alginate as an extracellular virulence factor of P. aeruginosa in CF pulmonary infections. Recent advances in the biochemistry and molecular genetics of alginate bio synthesis, as well as in our understanding of the basic defect in CF and isolation of the gene, mean that the book is even more timely than when first planned."

For centuries man has treated food to prolong its edible life, and nowadays both traditional and modern preservatives are used widely to ensure the satisfactory maintenance of quality and safety of foods. There continues to be increased public concern about the use of food additives, including preservatives, resulting from a perception that some of them may have deleterious effects on health. However, as eating habits have changed with an emphasis on what has been popularly termed a `healthy diet', there is at the same time a concern that reduction in preservative usage could lead to loss of safety and protection from food poisoning. While some preservatives are coming under increasing regulatory pressure others, particularly more natural ones, are receiving increased attention and gaining in importance and acceptability. This book supports the continued safe and effective use of preservatives within these current constraints. It therefore gives detailed information on the practical use of the major antimicrobial preservatives. Uniquely, it couples this with current understanding of their modes of action, at the levels of cellular physiology and biochemistry, in such a way as to provide a sound scientific basis for their efficacy. Such an approach also encourages the future logical development and use of preservatives.

The concept of this book arose out of an international workshop, which we organized and held at the University of Wales Conference Centre at Gregynog. The workshop was the first occasion on which researchers from all the different disciplines concerned with the extracellular virulence factors of mucoid strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in relation to cystic fibrosis (CF) had met to discuss this multifaceted problem. It was deemed a particularly timely moment to gather together experts for the exchange of facts, ideas and hypotheses. No formal abstracts were presented and no proceedings were published. But during the succeed ing months the organizers were persuaded by a number of participants that a wider audience should benefit from what had proved to be such a fruitful cross-fertilization of expertise. Thus we moved from being workshop organizers to book editors, sure in the knowledge that at least we had a willing and enthusiastic set of contributors It should be stressed, however, that this book is not a transcript of that workshop. Not all those participants are authors, and some new names have been added. Instead we have focused on alginate as an extracellular virulence factor of P. aeruginosa in CF pulmonary infections. Recent advances in the biochemistry and molecular genetics of alginate bio synthesis, as well as in our understanding of the basic defect in CF and isolation of the gene, mean that the book is even more timely than when first planned."