Thermal Inactivation Kinetics of Human Norovirus Surrogates and Hepatitis A Virus in Turkey Deli Meat

Abstract

4), in a publication on the incidence and causes of foodborne illnesses in the United States, reported that a large number of outbreaks are caused by HNoV (58%). Additionally, relatively high hospitalization and death rates are associated with HAV infection (32% and 2%, respectively) (1, 4).According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), deli meat has posed the highest per annum risk of illness and death among poultry products (5). Additionally, in other studies, Gould et al. (6) and Painter et al. (7) studied surveillance and attribution of foodborne disease outbreaks in the United States from 1998 to 2008. They found that, among individual food categories, poultry was the most commonly reported food vehicle of disease, causing 17% of outbreaks of foodborne illness (6), and that the proportions of poultry-associated foodborne illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths caused by human noroviruses and HAV were 28%, 14%, and 4%, respectively (7). In 1998 through 2002 alone, three large outbreaks were linked to the consumption of turkey delicatessen meat contaminated during processing (7). Since ready-to-eat (RTE) meat and poultry deli products can be consumed without further cooking, these products should be free of non-spore-forming pathogens following the industrial thermal process. However, they can become contaminated before packaging in the final retail wrap and thus pose a safety threat for consumers (8,9). Viral contamination of RTE and prepared foods most frequently comes from poor hand-washing practices of food handlers after toilet use. Fecal material can be left on hands or even under nails which then can come in contact with food products (10). Handling cooked products with bare hands has been identified as a major factor for pathogen transfer to RTE foods (11), and there is presumed to be a direct correlation between the number of pathogenic organisms on a food employee's hands and the probability of microbial transfer from hands to cooked food products (12). Since the contamination most likely occurs at the surface, it seems advisable to decontaminate the outer layer of products. For this purpose, postpackage pasteurization technologies could be practiced as a method for reducing surface contamination by food pathogens (9). One of the challenges for the industry would be to assess the required time and temperature combination, which would depend on the thermal inactivation kinetics of the target microorganism (13). It has been reported that foodborne enteric viruses are more heat resistant than most non-spore-forming bacterial foodborne pathogens (14); thus, processing recommendations based on the data for non-spore-forming bacteria may not eliminate similar numbers of foodborne enteric viruses. Since there is no specific federal regulation covering the minimum time-temperature combinations for inactivating virus in contaminated deli meat, establishment of potential thermal processes for inactivating human norovirus...

Modeling the Inactivation of Viruses from the Coronaviridae Family in Response to Temperature and Relative Humidity in Suspensions or on Surfaces

“…The use of surrogate coronaviruses has been suggested to overcome these challenges and expand the available data on coronavirus survival likelihood ( 13 ). Surrogates can be used under the assumption that they have similar physicochemical properties that mimic the viruses they represent ( 14 , 15 ).…”

Evaluation of heat treatments, different from those currently established in the EU legislation, that could be applied to live bivalve molluscs from B and C production areas, that have not been submitted to purification or relaying, in order to eliminate pathogenic microorganisms

“…As summarized in Bozkurt (2014) these may include the heating system, the food matrix, and heat transfer rates. Consequently, heat inactivation may differ widely between different food types and between food and cell culture media.…”

Aichi virus inactivation by heat in 2‐ml glass vials

“…For industrial applications to determine appropriate processing parameters, D-and z-values are calculated from linear thermal death time data. As previously described, "at a given temperature the D-value is defined as the time to decrease a microbial population by 1 log" (Bozkurt et al, 2013(Bozkurt et al, , 2015. Similarly, the described definition of "z-value is the temperature change required to change the D-value by l log" and where "the z-value is determined using inverse slope of log D against temperature" (Bozkurt et al, 2015).…”