Help with raised micro issues on cooked meat
I am in meat industry, we are having some issues with raised microbial viable counts on our cooked meat from one of our customer, We are trying everything to pinpoint why this is going on? but we couldn't find any main cause. My thought is we vacuum pack the meat before sending it to the customer, If we MAP the meat instead would it solve the issue? would vacuum pack be main reason for raised microbial count???
Before you even consider an alternative packaging style, you need to perform a full process evaluation to understand what is the root cause
There is obviously a break in your process post cook that needs to be addressed
MAP packaging will prevent and/or delay microbial growth BUT what was there at packaging will still be there post packaging
Has the microbe been indentified? it's helpful to know exactly what you're chasing
I have seen this happen when the incoming raw material counts are high. Agree you should look at "bio-mapping" the full process - raw through cook, focusing on raw material age differences and different suppliers of the raw material.
Hi beginnerinscience,
:welcome:
Welcome to the IFSQN forums
It would be a good idea to cross-check the customer’s results against retained shelf life samples.
Most of the instances I have come across where there has been a problem with an individual customer has been the product has been abused in the chill chain or the customer’s refrigeration has been unsatisfactory. In fact, one company I previously worked for found that this could be such an issue that we used to carry out store audits to check refrigeration, operating practices and storage capacity*. This helped to significantly reduce complaint levels as our worst performing customers had refrigerators running at 20 °C (68 °F)!
* Storage capacity was checked because we found that some stores regularly order more product than they had chilled storage capacity so not all of the product was refrigerated all of the time.
Kind regards,
Tony
I am in meat industry, we are having some issues with raised microbial viable counts on our cooked meat from one of our customer, We are trying everything to pinpoint why this is going on? but we couldn't find any main cause. My thought is we vacuum pack the meat before sending it to the customer, If we MAP the meat instead would it solve the issue? would vacuum pack be main reason for raised microbial count???
hI bis,
Is there a specification involved ?
It might be useful if you could inform some of the actual "usual" and "raised" count numbers. I suppose you realise that bacterial viable counts are notoriously inaccurate, eg +/- 50% -!00% variations are "normal".
There is also a possiblity of sampling/analytical procedural differences between yr customer and your own lab. which IMEX has caused innumerable bacteriological arguments.
PS - vac./MAP packing can involve you with C.botulinum issues if this is a chilled packed/stored product.
Hi there,
Have you IDied the organism for instance. It would largely help to restrict your problem circle to look into.
All other's comments have made valid points which generally contribute to resolve the type of issues.
If it is only happening for the same customer continuously and you're sure about your controls are intact, it is time to dive into their operational controls to find the flaw there.
Do consider even least chance possibilities if you're really struggling to pinpoint the RC.