Journal of Food Engineering 100 (2010) 446451

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Journal of Food Engineering

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Pulsed UV light as an intervention strategy against Listeria monocytogenes and

Escherichia coli O157:H7 on the surface of a meat slicing knife
Andreja Rajkovic a,b,*, Igor Tomasevic b, Nada Smigic a,b, Mieke Uyttendaele a, Radomir Radovanovic b,
Frank Devlieghere a
a

Laboratory of Food Microbiology and Food Preservation, Department of Food Safety and Food Quality, Ghent University, Coupure Links 653, 9000 Gent, Belgium
Food Safety and Quality Management Department, Institute for Food Technology and Biochemistry, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Belgrade, Nemanjina 6,
11080 Belgrade, Serbia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 9 December 2009
Received in revised form 17 April 2010
Accepted 25 April 2010
Available online 15 May 2010
Keywords:
Intense pulsed light
Escherichia coli O157:H7
Listeria monocytogenes
Surface
Decontamination
Meat

a b s t r a c t
The main objective of this work was to explore the applicability of the Intense Light Pulses (ILP) for
decontamination of a stainless steel meat contact surface, exemplied by a slicing knife, as a function
of time between contamination and decontamination, number of light pulses applied, and the prior contact with different meat matrices. Listeria monocytogenes and Escherichia coli O157:H7 were chosen as the
challenge microorganisms. The ILP system was a laboratory-scale four-lamp batch system generating 3 J/
cm2 with an input voltage of 3000 V. The results obtained demonstrate successful application of ILP treatment for reduction of L. monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7 on a surface of stainless steel slicing knife. The
inactivation effectiveness depended on the type of meat product that was in the contact with the treated
surface and on the time between the contamination and the ILP treatment. Statistical analysis showed the
signicant interaction between the time and type of meat product on the effectiveness of ILP treatment.
The highest effectiveness of the ILP (the complete inactivation of 6.5 log CFU/side of knife) was obtained
when the knife surface was in contact with the products containing lower fat and protein content and
when it was treated with pulsed light as fast as possible after the contamination (within 60 s). The decontamination efcacy of ILP treatment could not be improved by multiple light pulses if lost due to the
extended time between the moment of contamination and ILP treatment. Results showed that the suggested approach can be very effective as an intervention strategy along meat processing lines preventing
cross-contamination between the equipment and the nal product.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The ability of continuous ultraviolet (UV) light and visible light
to inactivate cellular microorganisms is well known (Abadlozano
and Rodriguezvalera, 1984; Craik et al., 2001; Kuo et al., 1997;
Quesnel and Spencer, 1985; Turtoi and Nicolau, 2007). It is also
well known that improper cleaning and sanitation of structures
or equipment surfaces, in which bacterial cells may be habituated,
can facilitate food contamination (Dykes, 2003). Therefore recent
research attention has been focused on the investigation of bactericidal effects of different alternative decontamination technologies. Among these intense light pulses (ILP), also known as
pulsed light (Oms-Oliu et al., 2010), high intensity broad spectrum

* Corresponding author at: Laboratory of Food Microbiology and Food Preservation, Department of Food Safety and Food Quality, Ghent University, Coupure Links
653, 9000 Gent, Belgium. Tel.: +32 0 9 264 60 85; fax: +32 0 9 225 55 10.
E-mail addresses: andreja.rajkovic@UGent.be, arajkovic@agrif.bg.ac.rs (A. Rajkovic).
0260-8774/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2010.04.029

pulsed light (Roberts and Hope, 2003), pulsed white light (Kaack
and Lyager, 2007; Marquenie et al., 2003b), pulsed UV light (Bialka
and Demirci, 2007, 2008), and intense light pulses (Gomez-Lopez
et al., 2005a), have shown potential for decontamination of both
food and food-contact surfaces (Choi et al., 2010; Elmnasser
et al., 2007; Gomez-Lopez et al., 2007; Ozer and Demirci, 2006;
Woodling and Moraru, 2005). It has already been established that
ILP treatment is more effective on solid surfaces than in liquids
(Marquenie et al., 2003a; Roberts and Hope, 2003) and that it is
effective, to a different extent, in the reduction of microbial populations, both vegetative cells and spores, on food contact materials
and medical devices (McDonald et al., 2002; Ozen and Floros,
2001; USFDA/CFSAN, 2000).
Today, the literature on pulsed light is rapidly expanding, but a
gap remains between fundamental and applied research with respect to the actual application. In spite of all the potential that
ILP has already demonstrated as a method to control surface
microora it has also revealed its limitations (Elmnasser et al.,
2007; Marquenie et al., 2003b; Ozer and Demirci, 2006). Therefore,

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A. Rajkovic et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 100 (2010) 446451

the main objective of the current study was to explore the

applicability of ILP as a preventive intervention strategy to reduce
pathogenic bacteria from the meat contact surfaces such as
stainless steel slicing knife. With an aim to provide a concrete
advice on the treatment parameters, the role of time between
contamination and ILP treatment, number of light pulses applied,
and the composition and structure of meat matter in contact with
the knife surface were investigated for their inuence on the effectiveness of ILP treatment on the reduction of two major meat
pathogens.
Listeria monocytogenes was chosen as the challenge microorganism because it is among the most resistant to ILP and it presents
one of the key microbial hazards in meat industry (Gomez-Lopez
et al., 2005a). Also, a signicant increasing trend has been observed
over the past 5 years in listeriosis incidence at the EU level (EFSA,
2007; Goulet et al., 2008), with the highest frequency of positive
samples found in meat products (EFSA, 2006, 2007). In a surveillance of listeria infections in Europe where 17 countries participated with 14 EU countries included, out of 18 outbreaks
reported, 9 of them (50%) were contributed to meat and sh products. As evidenced by a 2008 outbreak in Canada associated with
ready-to-eat (RTE) deli-meats that resulted in 57 cases of listeriosis
and 22 deaths (Anonymous, 2009). Contaminated frankfurters and
turkey deli-meat caused multi-state outbreaks of listeriosis in the
USA in 1998, 2000, and 2002 (Swaminathan et al., 2007), as well
as the occurrence of several recent, albeit smaller, recalls of RTE
meats across North America (USDA, 2010) prove that L. monocytogenes remains a considerable threat to meat safety (Mor-Mur and
Yuste, 2010).
Escherichia coli O157:H7 was chosen because numerous epidemiological reports have identied it as a major cause of outbreaks
associated with contaminated meat (Acheson, 2003; Juneja and
Marmer, 1999; Meng and Doyle, 1998; Olsvik et al., 1991) and is
usually detected in products like undercooked ground beef, turkey
roll, salami, roast beef, venison jerky (Mor-Mur and Yuste, 2010).
Its high infectivity at very low numbers is well recognized and requires eradication to the maximal extent possible. Reported outbreaks of E. coli O157 infection have often been very severe, with
high mortality rates, particularly in the elderly. Infamous examples
of such outbreaks occurred in Ontario, Canada, in September 1985,
in which 17 of 55 affected residents died and in Lanarkshire, Scotland, in November and December 1996, which resulted in 20
deaths among the 496 people affected (Chapman, 2001).

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Intense light pulse (ILP) equipment
The ILP unit used was a Tecum Mobile Decontamination Unit
(Claranor, Manosque, France). Light pulse duration of 300 ls and
pulse intensity of 3 J/cm2 were used for an input voltage of
3000 V. The lamps were 20 cm cylindrical xenon ash lamps
(Flashlamps Verre & Quartz, Bondy, France), with the spectral distribution of the light as reported by Claranor (Fig. 1) and the arc
length produced by the ashlamp of 175 mm. ILP unit was laboratory-scale four-lamp batch system. Top and bottom lamp were set
at 6 cm and left and right hand lamp at 10 cm from the treated
knife surface. Both side lamps were elevated 5 above the horizontal line to allow wider side-beam distribution over the treated
upper knife surface. The delivered energy was measured with SOLO
2 Power and Energy Meter (Gentec Electro-Optics, Inc., Quebec,
Canada) where the certied corrections are very low: for a broadband spectrum and are always inferior to 5%. Particularly the overestimation in the UV range is lower than 5%. This error is inferior to
the energy variation produced.

Fig. 1. Spectral distribution of the xenon lamp used. Source: Claranor, France.

2.2. Bacterial strain and culture conditions

L. monocytogenes strain LMG 23905 (Laboratory of Microbiology, Ghent University, Belgium) and E. coli O157:H7 strain LFMFP
463 (Laboratory of Food Microbiology and Food Preservation,
Ghent University, Belgium) were used throughout the study. A reference stock of both L. monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7 strains
was kept at 70 C in Tryptone Soy Broth (TSB, Oxoid, Hampshire,
UK), supplemented with 0.6% yeast extract (YE; Oxoid), with 15%
glycerol (Prolabo, Heverlee, Belgium). A stock culture was maintained at 4 C on a Tryptone Soy Agar (TSA, Oxoid) slant supplemented with 0.6% YE. The stock culture was renewed monthly.
Working cultures of L. monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7 were
activated from the stock culture prepared by loop inoculation in
10 ml of fresh TSBYE and incubated for 24 h at 30 C or 37 C,
respectively. During the experimental setup, stationary phase cells
were used and an initial inoculation level of approximately 7.5 log
CFU/mL was obtained by appropriate 10-fold dilutions of the working culture in TSBYE for both L. monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7.
2.3. Preparation and inoculation of the knife
As a model for industrial meat processing equipment, a polished
stainless steel round knife with a diameter of 6.5 cm was used. For
the purpose of cleaning and sterilization the knife was soaked
overnight in technical alcohol, scrubbed thoroughly with a brush,
rinsed three times in tap water and twice in distilled water, and
autoclaved at 121 C for 15 min. Sterilized knife was either dipped
in 5% solution of meat extract (Merck, Whitehouse Station, NJ, USA)
or it was used for the slicing of a pork meat, parisien sausage, and
dry-fermented sausage. Apart from the meat extract substrate all
other products were purchased from a major local retailer and
their declared composition is shown in Table 1. After the dipping
in the meat extract or after 30 s of slicing, one side of the knife

Table 1
Chemical composition of meat products in contact with the stainless steel surface.

Meat extracta
Pork meatb
Parisien sausageb
Fermented sausageb
a
b

Protein (%)

Carbohydrates (%)

Fat (%)

5
20.5
16.4
18

2
0
1.5
0.8

0
13.5
17
31

Taken from The Merck Microbiology Manual 12th Edition.

As declared by the manufacturer of the product on the label.

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A. Rajkovic et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 100 (2010) 446451

was inoculated with L. monocytogenes or E. coli O157:H7 by spreading 0.1 ml of bacterial culture with a disposable plastic tip over the
surface of the knife resulting in about 6 log CFU/cm2 (7.5 log CFU/
mL). The contact of the inoculum with knife was allowed for 1, 5,
15, 30, 45, and 60 min at room temperature prior to ILP treatment
of 1 or 5 light pulses. Throughout the experiment, the knife was
handled aseptically with sterile forceps.
2.4. ILP treatment
Treatments consisted of 1 or 5 ashes and every ash was manually started at a rate of one pulse per 2 s. The time after the inoculation until ILP treatment was accounted and ranged from 1 min
to 1 h. The decontamination effectiveness of the ILP treatment was
represented by the level of microbial inactivation determined as
log (N0/N) where N0 is the population in CFU/side of knife of the
control specimen (the population recovered from the surface of
the inoculated untreated knife) and N represents the population
in CFU/side of a knife after ILP treatment. All the experiments were
carried out in quadruplicate using the same culture on the same
day for every pair of trials (treatment and control) to minimize
sample variability.
The temperature of the knife surface was monitored with Testo
177-T4, temperature data logger (Testo AG, Lenzkirch, Germany)
with two external temperature probes attached.
2.5. Microbiological analysis
Surviving cells on the surface of a side of a stainless steel knife
were swabbed with 3 M Sponge-Stick, hydrated sponge with
10 mL neutralizing buffer (3 M, Minnesota, USA). It allowed sampling without directly handling the sponge or the knife. The limited
recovery loss was determined to be in the range 0.30.6 log CFU/
mL.
After swabbing the sponge was aseptically detached from the
stick and transferred to a sterile stomacher bag. One to fty
(1:50) dilution of the cells present on the knife surface was made
by adding 40 ml of peptone physiological saline (PPS; 8.5 g/L NaCl
and 1 g/L neutralized bacteriological peptone (Oxoid) and the sample was pummeled for 120 s in stomacher Seward Laboratory blender 400 (UAC House, London, England). Subsequently, microbial
enumerations on the standard selective media were performed by
spreading 1 ml of the pummeled suspension over 3 agar plates followed by 24 h incubation at 37 1 C for E. coli 0157:H7 and
30 1 C for L. monocytogenes. For enumeration of E. coli 0157:H7
Cexime Tellurite Sorbitol MacConkey (Oxoid) selective media
(CT-SMAC) and for L. monocytogenes ALOA agar with Selective and
Enrichment Supplement (Biolife, Milan, Italy) were used. The total
number of cells was reported as log CFU per side of knife. The calculated limit of detection of the method used was 1.7 log CFU/side
of a knife, corresponding to about 0.6 log CFU/cm2. For the conditions where no surviving bacteria were found by enumeration, a
complete inactivation of pathogens was veried by the enrichment.
For the enrichment of L. monocytogenes a method recommended in
ISO standard 11290-1 (ISO, 11290-1:1996) was used while for the
enrichment of E. coli O157:H7 a method recommended in ISO standard ISO 16654:2001 (ISO, 16654:2001) was used.
2.6. Statistical analysis
Data were analyzed using SPSS Statistics 17.0 (Chicago, Illinois,
USA) data analysis software. A two sample independent t-test was
used to compare pairs of means with P 6 0.05. When multiple effect comparison was made, factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA)
and post hoc Tuckey analysis of Honestly Signicant Difference
(HSD) were used.

3. Results and discussion

3.1. The impact of the pathogenic species on the decontamination
effectiveness of ILP treatment
The results of this research demonstrated that under all tested
conditions ILP treatment was equally effective (P > 0.05) in inactivation of both L. monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7 inoculated on
the surface of the slicing knife. The overall difference in the mean
log reduction achieved, between the two pathogens, was less than
0.1 log (N0/N) (4.57 log (N0/N) for L. monocytogenes and 4.62 log
(N0/N) for E. coli O157:H7). This is in agreement with the ndings
of Gomez-Lopez et al. (2005a) who did not observe any difference
in susceptibility among different groups of microorganisms, after
studying 27 bacterial, yeast, and mould species. In contrast, several
previous studies have all reported the following trend of susceptibility to ILP treatment in decreasing order: Gram-negative bacteria,
Gram-positive bacteria, and fungal spores (Anderson et al., 1999;
Rowan et al., 1999). The most probable reason for the discrepancies
between the reported ndings is the difference in the experimental
setup and in the test conditions.
3.2. The impact of the series of multiple pulses on the decontamination
effectiveness of ILP treatment
In none of the tested conditions was signicant difference
(P > 0.05) in the level of inactivation observed when 1 and 5 light
pulses were compared. This indicated that the series of multiple
pulses could not signicantly improve decontamination effect obtained by the rst pulse for either L. monocytogenes or E. coli
O157:H7. The difference observed in the favor of additional pulses
was less then 0.1 log (N0/N) for both pathogens tested. The results
of temperature measurement showed only minor increase in the
temperature on the surface of knife, with a maximal change of
16 C after 5 ashes, thus having no inuence on the inactivation
of L. monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7.
The observed ndings can originate from at least two hypothesis. Firstly, for ILP treatments (likewise for the continuous UV
light), the shape of the inactivation curve was found to be sigmoid
(Fine and Gervais, 2004; Marquenie et al., 2003a) and the attening
of it for the ILP treatment above 3 pulses was also reported (Woodling and Moraru, 2005). It is possible that due to the higher radiant energy delivered (3 J/cm2) in the preset study than in the study
of Woodling and Moraru (2005) (1.27 J/cm2) and very short duration of a single pulse (300 ls) in the current study, the inactivation
curve for L. monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7 quickly leveled off
to the plateau after already one ash. Therefore successive ashing
was not able to increase the level of the reduction (Figs. 2 and 3). It
is also interesting to note that 1 pulse corresponding to 10 kW/cm2
in the present study resulted in about the same inactivation level
as did 100 pulses of 133 W/cm2 in the study of (Luksiene et al.,
2007). Secondly, the possibility of shadowing effect occurring
when bacteria are situated on top of each other in several layers
forming a colony can contribute to the explanation of the observed
phenomena (Hiramoto, 1984). Bacteria located on the upper layers
receive the light directly and are easily inactivated. However, bacteria on the bottom layers are protected by those on the upper layers which screen the light and allow survival of shadowed cells
(Gomez-Lopez et al., 2005b).
3.3. The impact of meat components on the surface of the knife on the
decontamination effectiveness of ILP treatment
The average log reduction of pathogen microorganisms was signicantly different between all the meat products (p < 0.01) inde-

A. Rajkovic et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 100 (2010) 446451

449

amount of lipids and proteins in the meat products (Table 1), the
average efcacy of ILP treatment decreased. The trend of the mean
reduction values was as follows: 4.69 log (N0/N) for pork meat, 4.12
log (N0/N) for parisien sausage, and 3.58 log (N0/N) for dry-fermented sausage. These ndings complement previously published
results indicating that the food composition affects the efcacy of
the decontamination by ILP and that proteins, fats, and oils
decrease the decontaminant efcacy of ILP (Gomez-Lopez et al.,
2005b; Roberts and Hope, 2003).
3.4. The impact of time interval between inoculation and the
treatment on the decontamination effectiveness of ILP treatment

Fig. 2. Log reduction in population of E. coli O157:H7 with 1 and 5 intense UV light
pulses on a side of a stainless steel knife in contact with different meat products at
various time intervals after the inoculation.

Fig. 3. Log reduction in population of Listeria monocytogenes with 1 and 5 intense

UV light pulses on a side of a stainless steel knife in contact with different meat
products at various time intervals after the inoculation.

pendently from the effect of successive ashing or type of pathogen and reached its maximum for the meat extract with an average
of 5.99 log (N0/N). As expected, with the increase of the total

The observed log reduction showed signicant dependence

(p < 0.01) on time intervals between contamination and ILP treatment. The effect of time was independent from all the other factors
apart from the effect of the type of meat product. The results
showed that the longer the time between inoculation and ILP treatment, the lower the lethality of the process. Every ILP treatment
performed within 60 s after the inoculation resulted in a complete
inactivation (6.5 log CFU/side of knife; veried by negative enrichment) of inoculated pathogens (Figs. 2 and 3). Prolongation of the
time to the treatment resulted in decreased effectiveness of the
inactivation. Additional 4 min of waiting resulted in the average
reduction of 5.82 log (N0/N), after 15 min this was 5.01 log (N0/N)
and it gradually kept decreasing until it dropped to 2.58 log (N0/
N) which was the reduction observed after 1 h.
Sheen and Hwang (2010) reported results of the study where a
ve-strain cocktail of E. coli O157:H7 was inoculated directly onto
a slicers round blade rim area at an initial level of ca. 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8
log CFU/blade (ca. 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 log CFU/cm2 of the blade edge
area), before slicing RTE deli-meat. There reported transfer from
the blade to the slices of meat was dependent on the level of knife
contamination (also in agreement with Montville and Schaffner
(2003)), but E. coli O157:H7 counts recovered from the rst few
slices were always 12 logs higher than on the immediate following slices, although approximately 23 logs less than the level of
inoculum on the blade. Similar has been found for L. monocytogenes
(Vorst et al., 2006a,b). This indicates that the ILP inactivation protocol developed in the current study could be sufciently effective
even with 60 min of the waiting time between contamination and
decontamination, if there is only a low contamination level. In general, the higher the initial contamination levels of E. coli O157:H7
on the blade, the larger the number of ham slices that will be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 during slicing (Sheen and Hwang,
2010).
Regarding food-contact surfaces one of the main concerns is the
(negative) effect of its topography on the efcacy of ILP. Because
food-contact surfaces are rarely smooth, the presence of cracks
or crevices may hinder to some extent the effectiveness of ILP
treatment. Depending on the values of the roughness parameters,
different aluminum and steel surfaces can allow, in average, the
hiding of about 1 to up to 3 layers of bacterial cells. A visual conrmation of these bacterial cell depositions was obtained by electron microscopy (USFDA/CFSAN, 2000; Woodling and Moraru,
2005). It has been also demonstrated that pathogenic microorganisms can be internalized in produce tissues (Beuchat, 2006) or in
tenderized meat as reported for E. coli O157:H7 (Graumann and
Holley, 2007). ILP cannot inactivate those microorganisms because
the light will be absorbed at the surface. The present research suggests that both phenomenas, hiding of microorganisms in the micro-crevices of stainless steel and their internalization in the
tissues of the meat particles left on the surface of the knife, are
time dependant. This emphasizes the importance of keeping the
time between possible contamination and ILP treatment as short
as possible.

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A. Rajkovic et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 100 (2010) 446451

action of the hydrophobicity of the stainless steel surface, the bacterial cells and the meat products can be used to explain the
differences of the spatial distribution of the cells on the surface
of the knife and the formation of the protective layer and its thickness which subsequently affected the decontamination effect itself
(Samuelsson and Kirchman, 1990; Woodling and Moraru, 2005).
4. Conclusion

Fig. 4. Interaction of time after the inoculation until the ILP treatment and the type
of meat product in contact with the stainless steel surface and their effects on the
effectiveness of ILP treatment. (The lines represent the observed trend.)

Finally, analysis of the results by ANOVA indicated that the

inuence of the type of the meat product on the effect of decontamination strongly depend on the time factor (p < 0.01) (Fig. 4).
The decontamination of a stainless steel knife in contact with a
meat extract was least affected by the time since the reduction remained complete for the rst 45 min and then decreased to 3.48
log (N0/N) after additional 15 min. The decrease of the ILP effect occurred after 30 min when the knife was in contact with the pork
meat and after 15 min when it was used for the slicing of parisien
sausage. In just 5 min the reduction signicantly decreased from
the complete inactivation (conrmed by negative results of enrichment) to 3.79 log (N0/N) and kept the negative trend at all times
until it reached lowest level of 2.14 log (N0/N) after 60 min.
This phenomenon cannot be explained by the simple effects of
time and type of the meat product since the diversity of protein
and lipid content between them, obviously, remains constant
through time. However, a known factor that inuences ILP treatment is the distribution of bacteria on the metal surfaces which
is, on the other hand, dependant on the hydrophobicity of the surface and bacterial cells themselves (Samuelsson and Kirchman,
1990). In a stainless steel/pathogen cells/meat product system
the bacteria would be preferentially located between the metal
and meat product medium because the latter has a more pronounced tendency to run away from the metal surface and has
a higher afnity for the bacteria (Meylheuc et al., 2002). This
may explain our visual observations of different behavior of culture
placed on the knife surface depending on the pre-contact with
meat extract or different meat products. The watery inoculums
(cells in the broth) beaded up on the surface of the knife during
inoculation and drying, creating a protective, relatively thick layer
of media that covered the cells, shielding them from the direct effect of ILP. Visual assessment also indicated that the formation of
this layer is strongly dependant on both the time and the meat
type factor. The higher the protein and the lipid content of the
meat product that was in the prior contact with the knife surface,
the thicker, less watery, protective layer, and shorter the time
needed for its formation and drying. Possibly the effect and inter-

The results obtained demonstrate that ILP decontamination

treatment can be successfully applied for reduction of L. monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7 on a stainless steel meat contact surfaces, such as slicing knife. The study has shown that the
decontamination effectiveness of ILP on the meat contact surface
depends on the type of meat product that was in the prior contact
with the surface itself and is also a function of time between the
contamination and the ILP treatment. The interaction between
the time and type of meat product also plays a role in the inactivation process. These ndings are in agreement with elsewhere published data suggesting different factors inuencing transfer and
attachment of pathogens to food-contact surfaces (Sheen and
Hwang, 2010; Silva et al., 2008; Vorst et al., 2006a). The highest
effectiveness of the ILP will be reached if the meat contact surfaces
were in contact with the lower fat and protein products and are
treated with ILP as soon as possible after the processing steps
where contamination can occur. The increased number of successive ashes cannot compensate for the lost ILP effectiveness caused
by the extended time between contamination and ILP treatment.
ILP treatment is characterized by known advantages like its energy efciency (Gomez-Lopez et al., 2005b), higher practicality
over continuous wave UV sources in those situations where rapid
decontamination is required (Wang et al., 2005), lack of residual
compounds, the absence of chemical preservatives and low carbon
footprint. The fact that a signicant level of microbial reduction
can be achieved after a very short treatment time indicates much
promise for the use of ILP as a quick method of reducing the microbial load on a stainless steel surfaces in meat-processing environments. In this way ILP can support interventions along meat
production and processing lines and nd its place within established HACCP and QA systems without imposing cumbersome legal
procedures prior to its application. The importance of preventing
cross-contamination is highly important issue in food production,
as microbial cross-contamination either at home or production site
is one of the major causes of food contamination in sliced ready-toeat (RTE) deli-meat (den Aantrekker et al., 2003; Lin et al., 2006;
Perez-Rodriguez et al., 2007).
The further research in this area, especially on the quality of
meat and meat products will be of great interest for the practical
application of ILP treatments in meat processing.
Acknowledgement
The research performed has been part of the project FOOD-CT2005-007081 (Pathogen Combat) supported by the European Commission through the Sixth Framework Programme for Research and
Development. The research stay of Igor Tomasevic in the framework of his PhD was funded by BASILEUS PROJECT-EM ECW programme approved by European Commission. The loan of the
equipment from Claranor, France is gratefully acknowledged.
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