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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Food Microbiology
Volume 15 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1429756
Application of hot water and cold air to reduce bacterial contamination on broiler carcasses
Provisionally accepted- 1 Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Berlin, Germany
- 2 Other, Hannover, Germany
Two Different physical treatments (heat via water bath and cold air) with various temperatures (20/70/75/80 °C and -80/-90 °C) and exposure times (20, 30, 40 s) were carried out to identify a decontaminating effect on zoonotic pathogens on broiler carcasses. Subsequently, carcasses were analyzed for thermotolerant Campylobacter (C.), Salmonella, Escherichia (E.). coli and total colony count (TCC). Moreover, for the hot water treatment, qPCR with viable/dead differentiation (v-qPCR) was applied to detect viable but non-culturable cells (VBNC) of Campylobacter, referred to as intact but putatively infectious units (IPIU). Hot water immersion was tested on carcasses inoculated with C. jejuni and Salmonella, while cold air treatment was evaluated for naturally contaminated carcasses of broiler flocks colonized with Campylobacter.For hot water treatment, the statistically significant reducing effect was about 1 log10 CFU/ml for both Salmonella and Campylobacter for 70 -80 °C and 20/30 s treatments. The effect of heat treatment for Campylobacter was smaller when samples were analyzed with v-qPCR with reductions of 0.5 -0.8 log10 IPIU/ml in mean. Cold air treatments at -90 °C were effective in reducing the mean contamination level of Campylobacter by 0.4 -0.5 log10 CFU/ml at all exposure times (p < 0.05).Hot water treatments showed a decreasing trend on TCC by 0.6 -0.9 log10 CFU/ml (p < 0.05). TCC counts were not significantly affected by cold air treatment. For E. coli no statistically significant reductions were observed by hot water treatment. The cold air treatment at -90 °C for 20 and 40 s led to a reduction of E. coli by 0.4 and 0.8 log10 CFU/ml (p < 0.05), respectively. Treatment of carcasses with higher bacterial levels tended to show higher reduction.The research demonstrated that the efficacy of physical treatments for decontamination of broiler carcasses was more pronounced for hot water immersion than for cold air exposure. In conclusion, the results shed light on the potential application of these physical treatments in practice to reduce the quantitative load of contaminating pathogens to enhance food safety in the broiler meat production.
Keywords: broiler slaughtering process, thermal decontamination methods, Campylobacter spp., Salmonella spp., Hygiene indicators, PMA qPCR , Sensory analysis
Received: 08 May 2024; Accepted: 05 Sep 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Beterams, Kirse, Kreienbrock, Stingl, Bandick and Reich. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Felix Reich, Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Berlin, Germany
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