5 replies to this topic

[jbjurman]

Hello all,

 

I am working on developing a cook-chill program for soup products. Product is brought to 165F, bagged and sealed at >140F, and rapidly cooled to 40F within 6 hours via water bath. This RTE soup remains at 38F until ready for transport.

 

My question is how I should determine the shelf-life for this product, as management wants to have 45 days at 38F. The main stinker, if you will, is the survival of spore formers like Bacillus cereus and Clostridium botulinum which can start producing toxins within 30 days.

 

Does anyone have experience with this cook/chill process?

 

Much appreciated!

[JJF]

In my experience, we have always utilized a 3rd party lab to conduct shelf life studies. This provides the scientific data to support your reasoning. 

[GMO]

There's some good resources on the Chilled Food Association website in the UK.  It depends on what pH and other hurdle factors you have.  If there isn't an obvious control, you may need to do a challenge test.

 

CLEAN - Non-proteolytic Clostridium botulinum shelf life guidance - 9 7 18 FINAL

[kingstudruler1]

You also need to consider spoilage organisms that might survive your thermal process and readily grow under refrigeration temps.   

 

time/ temp, ph, salt / formula, etc, will all effect the safety and shelf life of your product.  

 

For instance, your temp (no time given) is essentially HTST pasteurization for milk -your product is not milk..   For milk the shelf life would be about 17 days.  other HTST products (sour cream, orange juice, etc)  might have much longer shelf lifes due to ph, etc. 

 

I would get an expert involved to help validate the safety of your process and  help determine shelf life.   

Edited by kingstudruler1, 03 April 2025 - 06:17 PM.

[jbjurman]

Thank you very much for the information.

 

My USDA rep mentioned that the soup is effectively pasteurized at 165F with no additional hold time, validated through their time/temp tables for 7log reduction in Salmonella. *not all of our products contain poultry, but for the sake of consistency we are holding each soup to the highest level of time/temp required.

 

We have multiple soup SKUs, while they all follow the same process flow, have varying pH, salt levels, etc... but now I'm not sure how to best pull retains. 

 

Since the soup is quick chilled in 6L bags, I don't want to send the lab multiple huge bags of product. On the other hand, portioning the chilled, bagged product into smaller containers may introduce external contamination. Does anyone have recommendations?

[GMO]

I'd talk to the lab. But first I'd talk to the lab about the organism of concern. To my mind it's not Salmonella spp. as you identified it's Clostridium botulinum.  If it's the latter, a shelf life study won't give you the answer you need so before you send bags, you need to decide what your study is and which need a study.  Varying pHs might mean some are fine for longer life and some aren't.  Bacillus cereus shouldn't be an issue if your cooling time is fast enough.  From memory toxin production is only above 10oC (whatever that is in F, it's above fridge temperature.)