Cooking Salsa, Bean, Queso products and chilling under 40F HACCP

Hello, 

I'm mfg products that are low acid, cooking and rapidly chilling to under 40F in blast freezer and cooling bath. I cannot find a guidance on hold temp and fill temp as these products are not considered acidified. 

Does anyone have this figured out? We have shelf life testing and validated studies for all products, I just wanted to see if this information was published somewhere that I can make an official refence. 

Thanks, for your help, 

Hi, do you mean filling and holding pre cook? and what sort of temperature would your process normally result in? i have worked with warm fill products pre cook previously so could share some data on that, but it would need validating for each of your products.

We prepare, heat, cook, in kettle and then blend/mix inline and with immersion blender then fill hot into plastic containers and seal (no vacuum or MAP); then rapidly cool in a cooling bath to under <40F.

Some of the products are acidified but others such as the dips (cheese and bean) are not. I need to understand what the recommended kill step temp is for these. They should be looked at separately, I'm thinking, like the cheese should be 145F for quality and fill at this temp, but then how is the 5 log reduction assured?

Hi, when cooking you need to know your target organism- normally this will be either Listeria mono (cook at 70C for 2 mins or equivalent) or C. Botulinum (90c for 10 mins or equivalent). In acidified products you can use a listeria cook, in non acidified products you should use a Botulinum cook as products with low PH don't support Botulinum growth.

I am not familiar with Fahrenheit scale but when i converted 145F it is 62.7c- this is the hot holding temp but NOT a safe kill step cook temperature.

I have attached a file with equivalent cook times and temperatures we used to use at my previous place to give you the option of using higher/lower temperatures to achieve the same result, it is good practice to have the minimum cook times/temps as critical limits and aim to cook to a target temperature slightly higher or longer in case of any issues with cookers.

Look at the FSMA - Appendix 3 for guidance.  Listeria, like Jay2023 mentioned is the most resistant (besides botulism) so that becomes the target organism. Many facilities will cook to 165 F. Cooking to 165 F kill listeria under a minute. I would also look at your fill temperature too. We make soups and process it similarly to your process. The FDA in the past has questioned our fill temperature. 

Botulism - look at the FDA seafood guide (best guidance document on botulism I've found, FDA wise). I'd also look at your process and research that way vs product. Many companies make soup the same way your do your dips, etc. 

Id recommend finding a process authority to help you.   Whare are you validated studies?  Innoculating product and processing to determine the log reduction?   that is how you assure the "X" log reduction.  

See below----you MUST use a process authority to write your procedure  (unless your not producing shelf stable products)

Federal Regulations require commercial processors of shelf stable acidified foods and low-acid canned foods in a hermetically sealed container to be sold in the United States to register each establishment and file scheduled processes with the Food and Drug Administration for each product, product style, container size and type and processing method (21 CFR 108). This website contains instructions for establishment registration and process filing along with other information useful to manufacturers of these types of products.