3 replies to this topic

[Lino]

Hi all,

 

i am a consultant and i,m doing a risk analysis for non-sterilized truffle products such as truffle honey, truffle salt and truffle vinegar.

The truffle after being dried in the oven is added/blended to the products (a small percentage, about 5-10%).

Honey, salt and vinegar notoriously do not support microbial growth, but should I consider dehydration as a process control?

I suppose I do not...

Thank you all

[FurFarmandFork]

That's tough, it's hard to say whether the water activity of the final product vs the truffle ingredient will be the determining factor, I'm always under the assumption that a chunk of wet ingredient, while it may eventually dry out in the final product, may take enough time to dry that it allows microbial growth.

 

Probably depends on the water activity of the truffle before drying, if it's high risk/perishable before you dry it then I think it would be a process control, if it isn't and you only dry it for processing capability or for quality purposes, it isn't.

[Lino]

Thanks for the reply,
My question because if I consider this step dangerous then I am obliged to do a study to confirm the activity of water after dried process....
if I had to do this, could it be valid to evaluate the dehydration of the truffle until truffle reach the desired water activity (<0.70). in this way I can find t and T necessary and validate with laboratory analysis for aw test. Do you agree?
Thanks a lot...

[FurFarmandFork]

If I'm reading you correctly, yes if you dehydrated the truffle component and it was under 0.8 water acitivity before mixing into your other products then you wouldn't need to worry about microbial growth being contributed by the truffle ingredient. As always other controls will need to be in place before it's brought down and everything should be pathogen free.