Enhancing sustainability of chilled prepared foods by risk assessment to set shelf life, reduce processing energy and wastage whilst assuring safety

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The shelf life of foods which are not sterile depends upon the microbial loading of raw materials, process lethality, postprocess contamination and constraints on growth in post process storage. The chilled food industry supplies large volumes of products given a low intensity heat process targeting vegetative pathogens (> 70C/2min but < 90C/10 min) plus a limited amount of food processed to meet the 90C/10min criterion for extended shelf life. The project hypothesizes that longer shelf lives may be justified at the lower range of heat treatments if real spore loadings and growth rates are taken into consideration. It further proposes that heat treatments, less severe than 90C/10min may be safely applied to deliver long shelf lives, if an analytical approach is taken to spore distribution, thermal death and sub-lethal spore injury. The pathogen of most concern in chilled foods heated at > 70C/2min is non-proteolytic C. botulinum. The challenge for this project is to define and achieve recognition for a designed approach to linking actual microbial loads of on proteolytic C. botulinum through a defined heat process to a safe shelf life using risk assessment techniques. This will be aimed at meeting a target (performance criterion) of no detectable botulinum toxin at the end of shelf life. Such work requires developments to risk assessment methods and the use of leading edge spore recovery and enumeration techniques. Raw material classes will be established, fundamentally valid spore distribution curves derived (using a Bayesian update procedure) and lethality effects confirmed. For the outcome of the research to be accepted by relevant bodies (e.g. ACMSF) it is essential that the design and execution of the experimental work will stand scrutiny from external experts and is not viewed as partisan to the industry. For this reason, an Expert Group will provide guidance to the commercial and research partners.

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