title: Monitoring beef carcass surface microbial contamination with a luminescence-based bacterial phosphatase assay.
abstract: A commercially available microbial phosphatase test kit (Fast Contamination Indicator; FCI) was evaluated as a rapid method for estimating microbial contamination levels on beef carcass tissues. A set of actual beef carcass surface sample swabs (n = 70) was tested using the assay as a means to rapidly (10 min) monitor carcass swab sample microbial contamination. A regression equation was developed in experiment 1 and tested on an independent population. There was agreement between this assay and the conventional plating method for total aerobic mesophilic bacteria (r = 0.93). The predicted total mesophilic aerobic bacteria count generated from the fitted regression line (predicted log10 CFU/cm2 = 0.7505 x log10 FCI microbial phosphatase test values + 0.6726) showed a high correlation with actual aerobic mesophilic total counts (r = 0.88). The FCI test offers a simple and rapid method to estimate microbial contamination levels on beef carcasses.
authors.affiliation: US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Roman L. Hruska US Meat Animal Research Center, Nebraska 68933-0166, USA.
authors.forename: Dong-Hyun
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.forename: Gregory R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Siragusa
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001419:Bacteria / Q000254:growth & development / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D002417:Cattle; D015169:Colony Count, Microbial; D005516:Food Microbiology; D008163:Luminescent Measurements; D008460:Meat / Q000382:microbiology*; D010744:Phosphoric Monoester Hydrolases / Q000032:analysis*; D012044:Regression Analysis
chemical_list: D010744:Phosphoric Monoester Hydrolases