Abstract
A new intervention method has been developed using infrared heating to pasteurize the surface of turkey frankfurters contaminated with potentially fatal Listeria monocytogenes prior to final packaging. A laboratory infrared heating device was constructed to treat turkey frankfurters coated with approximately 10 6–7 cells/cm 2 of a four-strain mixture of freshly prepared L. monocytogenes. The surface temperature of frankfurters was increased from refrigerated conditions to a final temperature of 70, 75 and 80 °C, achieving an average of 3.5±0.4, 4.3±0.4 and 4.5±0.2 (mean±S.E.) log-reductions in bacterial counts. No noticeable physical damage to the heat-treated samples was observed. Although the heat-treated samples were slightly browner than the control by visual observation, the measured color attributes (L*, a* and b*) were not significantly different from the control after a few hours of refrigerated storage. Experimental results of this study suggested that infrared surface pasteurization potentially could be use as an intervention technology to kill L. monocytogenes contaminated on the surface of frankfurters immediately prior to final packaging and reduce the risk of foodborne listeriosis caused by these products.
Published Version
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