Increased safety of fermented sausage by the application of production exposure assessment for VTEC

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Fermented sausage has caused outbreaks with VTEC (verocytotoxogenic Escherichia coli) on several occasions. Depending on the processing procedures, there are different possibilities to control process and product parameters. In traditional processes, no starter culture is used, and temperature and humidity may vary between production batches with little opportunity to control. In contrast, modern processing facilities have climate chambers where temperature and humidity may be controlled and therefore also adjusted in order to optimise the process. These differences will affect the HACCP plans and needs to be accounted for. For an improved safety, increased knowledge is needed about the response of VTEC (growth, survival) during the production of fermented sausage. An exposure assessment approach simulating the effect of critical process and product parameters on the accumulated effect of the processing steps, would be useful for evaluating the safety of varying processing procedures and type of products. Some data about growth and reduction of VTEC in fermented sausage can be found in the literature, obtained from studies performed on specific and real products. Existing data cannot be directly applied on other fermented products then studied, due to large cultural and traditional variations in the processing procedures. Another complicating factor is the effect of several interacting parameters such as temperature, pH-value and water activity on the survival/reduction of VTEC during processing and storage. For a quantitative exposure assessment of VTEC along the production of fermented sausage, simulation models predicting the inactivation and growth of VTEC are necessary. Mathematical models for predicting reduction of E. coli O157 exist (Pathogen modeling Program and Pond et al 2001), and a growth/no growth model is described for E. coli (Presser et al 1998). These existing models need to be further developed and validated. The overall goal of the project is to improve the capability of producers of fermented sausage to control VTEC. This will be achieved by developing a data based tool for performing exposure assessments. The tool will be flexible enough to encompass a range of some of the most important parameters and it will be based on an inactivation model validated in fermented sausage. During the development of the tool, the need for additional data and models will be evaluated based on the current knowledge, and the potential impact of strain variation will be addressed. In order to verify the exposure assessment models, VTEC in inoculated sausage will be studied during process and storage.

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