Recent outbreaks of E. coli in meat have sparked concern, highlighting the never-ending and critical challenge of ensuring food safety. Despite stringent regulations and inspections, preventing such bacterial contamination remains a daunting task for meat and poultry processing companies and regulators alike.

“The meat industry continues to review and integrate testing and prevention measures by adopting best practices that focus on identifying control measure shortcomings,” said Richard Walsh, PhD, senior staff scientist, food and beverage for St. Paul, Minn.-based Ecolab. “Although these are largely reactionary efforts, they underscore the need for constant vigilance and the need to review and track the entire process for understanding and identification of intervention controls that are deficient.”

Ecolab’s approach to this segment of food production accounts for the different areas of expertise necessary to effectively manage a processing plant.

“The core principles of operation must consider all aspects of the manufacturing process,” Walsh said. “More specifically, this involves details for cleaning and environmental testing prior to operation to assure that contamination will not occur from the process equipment during production. Routine testing of product for evidence of contamination is the primary metric during production, and following production a regimented cleaning program with effective products allows for the accomplishment of resetting the sanitation state.”

That’s why creating a food safety culture in and around the processing plant is critically important for preventing E. coli and other harmful pathogens such as Salmonella and Listeria.

“Creating and fostering this safety culture involves taking a top-to-bottom approach to plant sanitation and disinfection, focusing on harborage points like gaps, crevices and drains,” said Kiran Kulkarni, associate marketing director for Arxada, the Switzerland-based parent company to Enviro Tech. “Using foaming cleaners, sanitizers and disinfectants can help eliminate pathogens from these harborage points with minimal downtime.”

Robert Ames, director of business development, meat and pet food for Lenexa, Kan.-based Corbion, which provides harvest intervention and decontamination solutions for the meat industry, noted this is a rising concern of the industry. Therefore, the company leverages its extensive global network to deliver locally fermented lactic acid to the world’s leading meat processors.

“For our part, we have expanded the utility of our products to benefit plant operations,” he said. “We offer products that are less degrative to plant floors and equipment and more contributive to product quality and shelf life.”

Evolving solutions

For decades, the main formulations used in protein processing facilities were chlorine-based products. This presented several challenges for processors, including more time in contact with the surfaces, rinsing requirements and shorter re-application times. Kulkarni explained that this cost processors throughput and extended downtime.

“Additionally, chlorine-based products can produce carcinogenic by-products,” he said. “With peracetic acid (PAA) becoming more popular today, processors can fight pathogens like Salmonella more efficiently, with no toxic by-products, and lower operating costs. PAA-based products break down into environmentally friendly byproducts; they can be used in organic foods without the need for water rinse after treatment.”

Today, Enviro Tech offers a range of sanitizers, disinfectants and other sanitization products for the protein processing industry using innovative PAA formulations.

“These formulations are specifically designed and proven to control the most common pathogens, such as E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria,” Kulkarni said. “One of our standout products is Perasan A, an antimicrobial formulation based on PAA that is used to sanitize meat, poultry and seafood processing premises.”

When used in conjunction with the company’s foaming additive Perafoam, it creates a unique foam cleaning and sanitizing blend called PeraDrain, found to be particularly useful in cleaning drains and reducing surface microbial niches.

“The foaming agent in PeraDrain extends the contact time between Perasan A and the surface, enhancing its effectiveness against pathogenic microorganisms and effectively controlling the pathogens that may be hiding in inaccessible spaces,” Kulkarni said. “Another notable product, Perasan MP-2, has been formulated for direct use on meat and poultry products to control microbial load. This product is instrumental in helping protein processors meet the USDA and FDA regulatory requirements for microbial control.”

Corbion continues to invest in regulatory development to widen parameter windows and take fewer corrective actions and work hard to make lactic acid — a staple in many facilities — more user friendly.

“Our lactic acid solutions are naturally derived and created through fermentation processes, ensuring they are both effective and renewable,” Ames said. “Our primary offerings focus on reducing pathogens and spoilage bacteria on carcasses and freshly harvested meat.”

Testing matters

Walsh noted testing tools have evolved to be more specific for organisms of concern, and that has also led to faster testing that can be accomplished onsite at a processing facility, with results obtainable within the production day.

Season (Yicheng) Xie, PhD, global product manager, ddPCR food applications for Bio-Rad Laboratories, noted that certain groups of pathogenic E. coli pose public health risks.

“For the meat industry, the most concerned pathogenic E. coli group is the Shiga Toxin Producing E. coli, which causes severe illness that could lead to a critical condition called hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS),” she said. “The USDA-FSIS define STEC as E. coli isolates that contain an stx gene, and eae gene, and genetically identified as one or more of the regulated serogroups (O26, O45, O103, O111, O121, O145 and O157).”

An important trend in STEC testing is continuous improvement of accuracy. Xie explained that when using a qPCR-based method, since the whole population of bacteria is being lysed and analyzed as a bulk, there are common challenges in differentiating between samples where a single organism contains both stx and eae or a true positive, from samples in which stx and eae reside in different organisms, an unconfirmed positive result.

Bio-Rad Laboratories developed the dd-Check STEC Solution that utilizes the next generation PCR technology, the Droplet Digital PCR to significantly improve the accuracy of STEC testing by eliminating unconfirmed STEC positive results.

“By using the dd-Check STEC Solution, a sample is partitioned into up to 20,000 droplets that encapsulate individual intact E.coli cells, cell lysis and PCR amplification are taking place independently in each droplet, and the droplets are individually screened for both stx and eae targets to determine if both virulence genes are coming from the same bacterial population,” Xie said. “The power of partitioning and whole cell encapsulation are what makes this method unique, because we are able to isolate individually bacterial cells in droplets, which is equivalent to isolating single colonies on a media agar plate during cultural confirmation.”

The dd-Check STEC Solution serves as a screening method and a molecular confirmation method that provides culture-independent and confirmed positive results within six hours post-enrichment, which largely reduces time-to-result compared to the traditional testing scheme which includes a primary screening and cultural confirmation that could take up to five days, according to Bio-Rad Laboratories.

A helping hand

To help processors and those in the industry continue to fight E. coli and other food safety challenges, Enviro Tech collaborates with distributors and end users, providing them with research studies, educational opportunities, training and regular product and usage tips.

“Our aim is to assist in the implementation of a robust food safety culture, ensuring the highest standards of safety in the protein processing industry,” Kulkarni said. “In the United States, key regulations, inspections, and tests ensure that our protein production and processing are among the safest in the world. Keeping this reputation intact is good for business and essential for our global food processing industry.”