Abstract
Surface-ripened cheeses are matured by means of manual or mechanical technologies posing a risk of cross-contamination, if any cheeses are contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. In predictive microbiology, primary models are used to describe microbial responses, such as growth rate over time and secondary models explain how those responses change with environmental factors. In this way, primary models were used to assess the growth rate of L. monocytogenes during ripening of the cheeses and the secondary models to test how much the growth rate was affected by either the pH and/or the water activity (aw) of the cheeses. The two models combined can be used to predict outcomes. The purpose of these experiments was to test three primary (the modified Gompertz equation, the Baranyi and Roberts model, and the Logistic model) and three secondary (the Cardinal model, the Ratowski model, and the Presser model) mathematical models in order to define which combination of models would best predict the growth of L. monocytogenes on the surface of artificially contaminated surface-ripened cheeses. Growth on the surface of the cheese was assessed and modeled. The primary models were firstly fitted to the data and the effects of pH and aw on the growth rate (μmax) were incorporated and assessed one by one with the secondary models. The Logistic primary model by itself did not show a better fit of the data among the other primary models tested, but the inclusion of the Cardinal secondary model improved the final fit. The aw was not related to the growth of Listeria. This study suggests that surface-ripened cheese should be separately regulated within EU microbiological food legislation and results expressed as counts per surface area rather than per gram.
Highlights
Smear-ripened and mold-ripened cheeses are soft or semi-soft cheeses, matured by means of a microflora spread on the cheese surface
Rudolf and Scherer (2001) reported in a study conducted on several European countries that 15.8% of smear cheeses contained organisms of the genus Listeria, confirming that contamination within dairy plants was persistent over a period of several weeks to months, that cross-contamination was an important factor contributing to this persistence and that L. monocytogenes can survive in raw or pasteurized milk cheeses (Dalmasso and Jordan, 2014)
Three growth curves were obtained (1 for each batch) for the growth of L. monocytogenes, with each time point being an average of four independent replicates
Summary
Smear-ripened and mold-ripened cheeses are soft or semi-soft cheeses, matured by means of a microflora spread on the cheese surface. Listeriosis carries one of the highest hospitalization rates among known foodborne pathogens (91%) (Denny and McLauchlin, 2008; Scallan et al, 2011) and requires enhanced surveillance which involves elevated costs derived from excluding or treating the disease. In line with these facts, put, EU legislation on microbiological criteria of foods has established that there should be absence of this organism in food if the food supports growth of the organism and
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