Growth factors to consider in a Risk Assessment for fruit juice ?
Hi All
what are the growth factors one should consider when doing a risk assessment on Micro or pathogens?
It really depends on the conditions of the food and environments, very broadly speaking temperature, pH, oxygen (some), water activity, preservatives, time.
Do you have a specific product and/or pathogen in mind? This would help to narrow down a more accurate answer to your question
Hi .
The products are Fruit drink 8% concentrate & a Nectar concentrate.
Total Plate Count
Yeasts & Molds
Coliforms
E. Coli
Salmonella
For those types of product pH is likely to be a key consideration, as will use of any preservatives, and temperature.
The former will make little difference to spoilage organisms - plenty of yeasts, moulds etc that'll happily thrive in juice down to very low pH - but depending on the pH of your products it could have a significant bearing on behaviour of Salmonella and E. coli.
The specific purpose of your risk assessment isn't clear, but you might also want to include Listeria in your list - whilst Salmonella and pathogenic E. coli are the more common cause of food poisoning linked to juices (indeed I'm not sure I'm aware of any actual cases of listeriosis from juice), there are certainly a number of studies that have shown it can survive in some juice products.
You may also want to consider water activity, although that will very much depend on the formulation of your products.
Hello,
pls remember to validate a 5 log reduction in the kill step for the pathogen m.o. that you have choosen ,
best regards,
leila