Detection of cold-tolerant clostridia other than Clostridium estertheticum in raw vacuum-packed chill-stored meat

Influence of different shrinking temperatures and vacuum conditions on the ability of psychrotrophic Clostridium to cause ‘blown pack’ spoilage in chilled vacuum-packaged beef

“…Conversely, C. algidicarnis and C. putrefaciens have been associated with deep tissue spoilage, but not with distension of package (Broda, DeLacy, Bell, & Penney, 1996;. Due to the difficulties to differentiate C. algidicarnis from C. putrefaciens, even by molecular methods Broda et al, 2003;Cavill et al, 2011;, we hypothesize that the isolate C2I5EXCHPKP may be C. putrefaciens, concerning the its gather gas production ability This species has been described to be able to produce gas from glucose (Sturges & Drake, 1927). This fact would explain the gross distension of packages in which this microorganism was inoculated.…”

“…This type of spoilage has been mainly associated with psychrotrophic Clostridium that grow at low refrigeration conditions such as −1.5°C . Due to the difficulties in recovering these microorganisms from the environment or food samples , many studies have used molecular methods to detect psychrotrophic Clostridium either in the abattoir environment or in vacuum-packaged meats (Broda, Musgrave & Bell, 2003;Broda et al, 2002;Cavill, Renteria-Monterrubio, Helps, & Corry, 2011). Although this approach leads to high occurrence rates of psychrotrophic Clostridium in comparison to recovery rates of traditional microbiological analysis , the major limitation of DNA-based methods is that the ability of isolates to cause 'blown pack' spoilage cannot be assessed or it is underestimated, since viable cells cannot be recovered (Broda, Saul, et al, 2000;Broda et al, 2002).…”

“…Therefore, it should be highlighted that the presence of these microorganisms poses a risk for the stability of vacuum-packaged beef during chilled storage . Although data on the occurrence and distribution of the different species of psychrotrophic Clostridium are scarce, a recent study (Cavill et al, 2011) has indicated that several other species of psychrotrophic Clostridium can be involved with the spoilage of red meat, stressing the importance of more studies on the role of these microorganisms for the microbiological quality of vacuum-packaged meat products.…”

Development and validation of a real-time PCR assay specific for Clostridium estertheticum and C. estertheticum-like psychrotolerant bacteria

“…As far as we are aware, C. bowmanii and C. lacusfryxellense have not been formally identified on meat or in meat processing environments and have not been shown to cause "blown pack" spoilage of vacuum packaged chilled meat products, although Mochonas et al (2010) reported isolating C. bowmanii from soil outside an abattoir. Cavill et al (2011) used a direct 16 S rDNA PCR-RFLP method to screen for cold-tolerant clostridia other than C. estertheticum in raw vacuum packaged chilled meat products and found sequences similar to C. tagluense and C. bowmanii but did not confirm their presence. Currently, there are no rapid cost effective PCR methods available that will distinguish C. estertheticum from the C. estertheticum-like species.…”

“…A number of clostridial strains, including Clostridium algidicarnis (Boerema, Broda, & Bell, 2002;Lawson, Dainty, Kristiansen, Berg, & Collins, 1994), C. algidixylanolyticum, C. gasigenes, C. frigidicarnis (Broda, Lawson, Bell, & Musgrave, 1999;Broda, Saul, Bell, & Musgrave, 2000;Yang, Balamurugan, & Gill, 2009), C. estertheticum (Collins, Rodrigues, Dainty, Edwards, & Roberts, 1992), C. estertheticum subspecies laramiense (Kalchayanand, Ray, & Field, 1993), C. frigoris/ estertheticum-like (unpublished data, Cavill, Renteria-Monterrubio, Helps, & Corry, 2011) and C. tagluense-like (Cavill et al, 2011) have been implicated in red meat spoilage. These clostridia are able to grow in anaerobic conditions and at chilled temperatures, some psychrophilic species as low as − 1.5°C, the optimal storage temperature for chilled red meat.…”