The Benefit of a Plant-Based Cattle Vaccine for Reducing Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia Coli Shedding and Improving Food Safety

Upon ingestion, enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) can colonize intestinal mucosa and cause hemorrhaging of nearby tissue. The failure to adequately control its contamination of food and water can consequently compromise the health of a population and incur economic losses to all stages of the food supply chain. EHEC is currently one of the foremost foodborne pathogenic threats worldwide because of its virulence across all age groups and demographics, a low infective dose, a relatively high resilience in diverse environments and its widespread prevalence across cattle herds. EHEC primarily colonizes the bovine digestive tract from which it can be transmitted via fecal shedding or during slaughter. Considering its threat to food security and in accord with the ‘One Health’ framework, the development of a bovine vaccine as a pre-harvest intervention strategy to curtail the transmission of EHEC is of great interest. Although two EHEC vaccines have already been developed using bacterial production platforms, their market penetrance has been markedly low. As an alternative, production in a plant platform may have the potential to redress the reasons for this low penetrance by providing a better economy of scale and a more convenient mode of delivery. This chapter summarizes the scope of the threat posed by EHEC and discusses the prospects for developing a commercial plant-based vaccine for EHEC within the framework of the North American beef industry.