title: Assessing the Performance of Clostridium perfringens Cooling Models for Cooked, Uncured Meat and Poultry Products.
abstract: Heat-resistant spores of Clostridium perfringens may germinate and multiply in cooked meat and poultry products when the rate and extent of cooling does not occur in a timely manner. Therefore, six cooling models (PMP 7.0 broth model; PMIP uncured beef, chicken, and pork models; Smith-Schaffner version 3; and UK IFR ComBase Perfringens Predictor) were evaluated for relative performance in predicting growth of C. perfringens under dynamic temperature conditions encountered during cooling of cooked, uncured meat and poultry products. The predicted growth responses from the models were extensively compared with those observed in food. Data from 188 time-temperature cooling profiles (176 for single-rate exponential cooling and 12 for dual-rate exponential cooling) were collected from 17 independent sources (16 peer-reviewed publications and one report) for model evaluation. Data were obtained for a variety of cooked products, including meat and poultry slurries, ground meat and poultry products with and without added ingredients (e.g., potato starch, sodium triphosphate, and potassium tetrapyrophosphate), and processed products such as ham and roast beef. Performance of the models was evaluated using three sets of criteria, and accuracy was defined within a 1- to 2-log range. The percentages of accurate, fail-safe, or fail-dangerous predictions for each cooling model differed depending on which criterion was used to evaluate the data set. Nevertheless, the combined percentages of accurate and fail-safe predictions based on the three performance criteria were 34.66 to 42.61% for the PMP 7.0 beef broth model, 100% for the PMIP cooling models for uncured beef, uncured pork and uncured chicken, 80.11 to 93.18% for the Smith-Schaffner cooling model, and 74.43 to 85.23% for the UK IFR ComBase Perfringens Predictor model during single-rate exponential chilling. Except for the PMP 7.0 broth model, the other five cooling models (PMIP, Smith-Schaffner, and UK IFR ComBase) are useful and reliable tools that food processors and regulatory agencies can use to evaluate the safety of cooked or heat-treated uncured meat and poultry products exposed to cooling deviations or to develop customized cooling schedules.
authors.affiliation: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service, Office of Public Health Science, Science Staff, 530 Center Street N.E., Suite 401, Salem, Oregon 97301, USA. tim.mohr@fsis.usda.gov.
authors.forename: T B
authors.initials: TB
authors.lastname: Mohr
authors.affiliation: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Eastern Regional Research Center, 600 East Mermaid Lane, Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania 19038, USA.
authors.forename: V K
authors.initials: VK
authors.lastname: Juneja
authors.affiliation: Department of Food Science and Technology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68583, USA.
authors.forename: H H
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Thippareddi
authors.affiliation: Department of Food Science, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901, USA.
authors.forename: D W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Schaffner
authors.affiliation: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service, Office of Public Health Science, Science Staff, Patriots Plaza III, Suite 9-225B, Washington, D.C. 20250, USA.
authors.forename: P A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Bronstein
authors.affiliation: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service, Office of Policy and Program Development, Risk, Innovations, and Management Division, Patriots Plaza III, Suite 8-124A, Washington, D.C. 20250, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Silverman
authors.affiliation: SafetyTaste Solutions LLC, Burke, Virginia 22015, USA.
authors.forename: L V
authors.initials: LV
authors.lastname: Cook
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002417:Cattle; D002645:Chickens; D003016:Clostridium perfringens / Q000254:growth & development / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D003080:Cold Temperature; D015169:Colony Count, Microbial; D003296:Cooking; D005506:Food Contamination / Q000032:analysis*; D005516:Food Microbiology; D008461:Meat Products / Q000382:microbiology*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011202:Poultry Products / Q000382:microbiology*; D013171:Spores, Bacterial / Q000254:growth & development / Q000302:isolation & purification; D013552:Swine