The effect of abattoir design on aerial contamination levels and the relationship between aerial and carcass contamination levels in two Irish beef abattoirs

Airborne Listeria spp. in the red meat processing industry

“…were observed. These findings are similar to other reports where the correlations between the aerial and carcass contaminations in slaughterhouses were poor (Prendergast et al 2004). However, this is contrary to some other reports where a strong association between the carcass and microbiological contaminations of the air was observed airborne Listeria (n) (Pearce et al 2006;Posh et al 2006).…”

“…However, the bacterial counts (CFU/m 3 ) determined were the highest even in comparison to other slaughterhouses, most presumably due to the small size of slaughterhouse No. 1, lack of room, and very narrow space around the slaughtering line, so the "dirty" areas of the slaughtering line were in proximity to the "clean" areas, although Prendergast et al (2004) observed no significant differences in bacterial counts between these areas. In slaughterhouse No.…”

“…carcass splitting, washing, evisceration, meat processing, and viscera transport (Doyle et al 2004;Prendergast et al 2004). This was the case especially in slaughterhouse No.…”

“…Mechanical evisceration often leads to intestinal rupture and discharge of the gut contents, however, the processes along the slaughter line can cause microorganisms occurrence after dissipation or evaporation in the air of aerosols, airborne droplets, and solid particles (Prendergast et al 2004;Posh et al 2006). Hence, the vigorous physical activities of slaughter and carcass dressing like carcass splitting and washing can be actually the sources of aerosols due to carcass-saw water cooling and the water stream meat washing, which actively spread potentially contaminated aerosols into the air (Kang & Frank 1990;Burfoot et al 2003;Prendergast et al 2004).…”

“…In the meat processing plants the samples were taken during meat products manufacturing. Air samples, each of the volume of 1500 litres (n = 158 (237.0 m 3 of the air) for Listeria examination, n = 141 (211.5 m 3 of the air) for aerobic mesophilic bacteria examination -CFU/m 3 ), were taken with an impaction air sampler (MAS 100 Microbial Air Monitoring Systems ® ) operating at a constant air flow rate (real time) of 100 l/min according to EN ISO 14698-1/2, 1 h before and at subsequent 3 h intervals during the slaughter operations (Prendergast et al 2004); they were also taken randomly during the meat chilling, meat processing, and packing processes. A gravity sedimentation method, such as the open Petri dish method using the exposure to the open air, combining both gravitational and inertial processes, was used for the determination of the number of mesophilic aerobic bacteria (CFU/plate) only in the slaughterhouses (Reck et al 2002;Kornacki 2006).…”