Hello all,
I work in a seed packing and sorting plant. the seeds are intended for the bakery industry, so like sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds etc.
Currently I am busy with renewing all our specification and I noticed that our microbiological limits are all over the place.
I want to standardize the limits but because there are no legal limits and the products need to be heated, I find it hard to find good limits.
Here is an example of the micro limits for sesame seeds:
- Aerobic Plate Count: 1.000.000 cfu/g
- Entrobacteriaceae: 100.000 cfu/g
- E.Colli: 100 cfu/g
- Moulds: 5.000 cfu/g
- Yeasts: 5.000 cfu/g
- Salmonella: absent in 25 gr
- Staphylococcus aureus: 10 cfu/g
- Bacillus cereus: 1.000 cfu/g
- Coliforms: 10.000 cfu/g
At what levels would something become harmful for our customer.
Is there some standard that, for example, E-coli 1000 cfu/g increases the change of illness significantly?