Abstract
The major objective of this study was to determine the role of psychrotrophic lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in spoilage-associated phenomena at the end of the shelf-life of 86 various packaged (air, vacuum, modified-atmosphere) chilled-stored retail food products. The current microbiological standards, which are largely based on the total viable mesophilic counts lack discriminatory capacity to detect psychrotrophic LAB.A comparison between the total viable counts on plates incubated at 30 °C (representing the mesophiles) and at 22 °C (indicating the psychrotrophs) for 86 food samples covering a wide range – ready-to-eat vegetable salads, fresh raw meat, cooked meat products and composite food – showed that a consistent underestimation of the microbial load occurs when the total aerobic mesophilic counts are used as a shelf-life parameter. In 38% of the samples, the psychrotrophic counts had significantly higher values (+0.5–3 log CFU/g) than the corresponding total aerobic mesophilic counts. A total of 154 lactic acid bacteria, which were unable to proliferate at 30 °C were isolated. In addition, a further 43 with a poor recovery at this temperature were also isolated.This study highlights the potential fallacy of the total aerobic mesophilic count as a reference shelf-life parameter for chilled food products as it can often underestimate the contamination levels at the end of the shelf-life.
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