Poor micro results for Ready To Eat filled pastry products
Hi guys. Happy holidays to all. Hope all goes well for you. I have worked in production unit and every month I will send sample from products to lab for microbiological test. We produce a filled pastry that’s similar to dumpling and springroll. One is with meat+veggies and another one is just veggies! Filling is cooked and pastry is uncooked. Filled pastries have been fried in franchies and serve to the customer. The lab result for these pastries made me worried. They had been tested for aerobic plate count, Enterobacteriaceae, Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella. The result for aerobic plate count is more than 1000 and it's about 14000 and exceed satisfactory limit but it's less than unsatisfactory limit. for Enterobacteriaceae is 4 to 6 times bigger than satisfactory limit. Other items are satisfactory. Does it make trouble? And any tips to solve the problem? When staffs wrap these pastries they put every filled tray immediately in blast chiller and also they take out filling 2 kg by 2 kg . Appreciate for your help.
Maybe you or your suppliers are experiencing holiday peaks in production and some practices may be done more hastly or with less trained staff. Try to figure out which step(s) are causing the higher than expected number.
You can do a test of you componants and/or the process steps to.
Send your semi-finished products (filling and pastry) to the lab to see if there is any contamination from either.
If you also produce most of your semi-finished products in house please consider also sending key ingredientes (egg and meat) to the lab.
If all of these are ok but your finished product is not than you know that the fault lies somewhere between wrapping the pastries and end of shelf life.
If raw materials are ok but your semi finished product is not.. than you know it is somewhere in between those steps.
Etc (:
Not sure if you mentioned, but when are you sending for lab results? Before or after frying?
Not sure if you mentioned, but when are you sending for lab results? Before or after frying?
before frying. we are producer and send it to our branches. they will fry and serve it for customer.
Maybe you or your suppliers are experiencing holiday peaks in production and some practices may be done more hastly or with less trained staff. Try to figure out which step(s) are causing the higher than expected number.
You can do a test of you componants and/or the process steps to.
Send your semi-finished products (filling and pastry) to the lab to see if there is any contamination from either.
If you also produce most of your semi-finished products in house please consider also sending key ingredientes (egg and meat) to the lab.
If all of these are ok but your finished product is not than you know that the fault lies somewhere between wrapping the pastries and end of shelf life.
If raw materials are ok but your semi finished product is not.. than you know it is somewhere in between those steps.
Etc (:
Appreciate for precious information. I will back and share you the result.
Hi guys. Happy holidays to all. Hope all goes well for you. I have worked in production unit and every month I will send sample from products to lab for microbiological test. We produce a filled pastry that’s similar to dumpling and springroll. One is with meat+veggies and another one is just veggies! Filling is cooked and pastry is uncooked. Filled pastries have been fried in franchies and serve to the customer. The lab result for these pastries made me worried. They had been tested for aerobic plate count, Enterobacteriaceae, Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella. The result for aerobic plate count is more than 1000 and it's about 14000 and exceed satisfactory limit but it's less than unsatisfactory limit. for Enterobacteriaceae is 4 to 6 times bigger than satisfactory limit. Other items are satisfactory. Does it make trouble? And any tips to solve the problem? When staffs wrap these pastries they put every filled tray immediately in blast chiller and also they take out filling 2 kg by 2 kg . Appreciate for your help.
Hi PG in Ireland,
No idea what a franchie is. Neither did google. Persian/Irish wok ?
I assume you supply frying instructions with ur product ?
IMEX one of basic General Rules in micro is never to make quantitative deductions based on one data point which is what you appear to have.
As I understand, yr datum is for a NRTE product. IMO an APC result of 14000 cfu/g is, offhand, insignificant. (2 days@37degC ?)(average of >=4 , duplicate dilution counts on sample ?) (APC data is also notoriously inaccurate).
Why did you not evaluate the "cooked" product ?
What was target micro "standard" for the product ?
What were numerical results for the Enterobacteriaceae, generic E.coli. (I assume L.mono. Salmonella were undetected)
I would suggest to first validate yr micro. "data" before you start looking for process problems everywhere.
before frying. we are producer and send it to our branches. they will fry and serve it for customer.
Why don't you test product after frying?? How are you sure your frying instructions are killing these microorganisms?