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Listen to this siteFriday 5 September 2003
This research project aims to develop acceptable method(s) for microbiological testing of red meats, sampling plans for red meat operators and hygiene performance criteria in the context of HACCP/QA.
Study Duration : September 2001 to November 2003
Contractor : University of Bristol
This research project aimed to develop acceptable microbiological testing methods, sampling protocols and hygiene performance criteria for red meat in the context of HACCP/QA for the purposes of Decision 2001/471/EC.
Industry survey
A UK meat industry postal survey was conducted between July-August 2002.
The results of this survey indicated that data on methods, used by the red meat industry to microbiologically verify HACCP in meat plants at the time, could be used to aid the development of a suitable EU-equivalent method and sampling plans for HACCP verification for the purposes of Decision 2001/471/EC.
However, information was not available, either in the scientific literature or from current practice in meat plants, to allow decisions to be made on criteria for microbiological monitoring in meat plants.
Therefore, experimental- and field-investigation-based work was carried out to obtain necessary data
Experimental studies
The performance (microbial recoveries) of two EU-legislation-described carcass sampling methods (wet-dry swabbing and excision) on artificially inoculated bovine, ovine and porcine carcasses were compared.
Wet-dry swabbing is preferred by the industry because it does not damage the carcass.
When all three meat species were taken together, average bacterial recoveries obtained by the swabbing expressed as a percentage of the appropriate recoveries achieved by the excision were 21% (range 2-100%) and 25% (range 9-47%) for TVC and Enterobacteriaceae (EC), respectively.
Potential factors contributing to these relatively low, and highly variable, bacterial recoveries by swabbing were investigated.
Plant studies
A large-scale evaluation of wet-dry swabbing and excision sampling methods was undertaken in 23 commercial slaughterhouses with bovine, ovine and porcine carcasses to determine any influence of sampling method on carcass-derived counts of the natural microflora.
Excision sampling produced significantly (P <0.05) higher total aerobic and Enterobacteriaceae counts compared with those measured by wet-dry swabbing.
No significant linear relationships were found between bacterial counts from near-adjacent carcases on processing lines for all three animal species taken by each sampling method. Thus it was not possible to calculate a factor, which allowed the inter-conversion of bacterial numbers for samples taken by each sampling method.
Contributing factors for this poor relationship were uncertainties associated with laboratory analyses and large variations in bacterial populations on the surfaces of near consecutive carcasses.
The implications of these findings for HACCP-style process control verification were investigated by weekly carcass sampling at three commercial slaughterhouses over a 13-week period. In these plants, two sets of seven carcass samples were taken within a narrow time frame (< 1 hour). When the bacterial numbers from each of these sets of samples were compared, as much as a 4 Log CFU cm-2 difference in the total aerobic counts was observed. These variations suggest that it may not be appropriate to institute corrective actions based on a single week’s statutory microbiological test results.
Results from this research project allowed discussions between the FSA, the Commission and other Member States resulting in the inclusion of the swabbing method in the 2002 HACCP Regulations.
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