Impact of Updated EC Regulation 2073/2005 on RTE Food Listeria Controls

Greetings,

With the recent changes to EC Regulation 2073/2005 in respect of category 1.2 Ready-to-eat foods able to support the growth of L. monocytogenes , other than those intended for infants and for special medical purposes and the criterion of "Products placed on the market during shelf-life with a limit of 100 cfu/g for L.mono"

"This criterion shall apply if the manufacturer is able to demonstrate, to the satisfaction of the competent authority, that the product will not exceed the limit 100 cfu/g throughout the shelf-life. The operator may fix intermediate limits during the process that must be low enough to guarantee that the limit of 100 cfu/g is not exceeded at the end of shelf-life."

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2005/2073?timeline=false#f00024

I'm curious to understand what producers of short shelf life RTE product are doing regarding product release and the increased likelihood of recall where a product is able to support the growth of Listeria, particularly products such as pre-packed sandwiches, poke bowls, salads etc.

It seems that the change to legisaltion could severely impact the convenience RTE sector where micro testing for Listeria can sometimes take longer than the shelf life of the food, such as 3 days for sandwiches or 7 days for bagged salads. The legislation essentially makes it illegal to place RTE foods on the market with  <100 L.mono where poduct can support it's growth.

Does anyone have any input on this change and how it's affecting their business or how it's likely to affect theior supply chain and what they're doing to mitigate or manage it. Thanks :) 

This criterion shall apply if the manufacturer is able to demonstrate, to the satisfaction of the competent authority, that the product will not exceed the limit 100 cfu/g throughout the shelf-life. The operator may fix intermediate limits during the process that must be low enough to guarantee that the limit of 100 cfu/g is not exceeded at the end of shelf-life.

Dear BM5,

In the Netherlands,  I see that a lot of product are now somehow accidified, to reduce the growth of Listeria Monocytogenes. Even RTE sandwiches. The changed recipes are than subject of a challengetest performed by a - for this - accredited laboratory. The report is approved by authorities.

Having worked in sandwiches in the UK, I'd be worried if any food business is letting themselves off the hook because their counts are <100 cfu g^-1.  You will get the occasional positive result, for sure.  Especially if you're using leaf.  But now is the time to start improving controls.  Acidification does make some sense.  But also working end to end with your supply chain.  In one business, a product with spinach leaf had spikes in Coliforms and Listeria every time we switched from Spanish to UK supply for example.  We've just got to start getting under the skin of that as an industry much as the chicken industry have been really working hard end to end on Campylobacter.

I think the reality is that anyone supplying the major retailers has probably felt their pressure from a few <10 cfu g^-1 detections but worryingly, perhaps, some of the smaller ones haven't, and some of them are doing patient feeding or supplying into hospital cafes.  

Having lived through a Listeria incident not in sandwiches, one fascinating but awful thing at the time was how much testing was hit and miss.  Even part of a product could have a count in one test and come up negative in another.  But that's the nature of microbiological contamination, it can be patchy.  So your positive but count of 20 might actually have been a count of 200 in another sandwich.  You cannot know.  And there have been too many cases of patient deaths particularly associated with sandwiches.  People are now sent home so early from hospital too the concept of where a patient is in the UK nowadays is more vague and a meal deal is an easy grab to take round to a friend recovering from surgery isn't it?  No preparation etc.

What would probably make sense is to really get into the nitty gritty of the data and where you have issues.  Pareto it.  Get after the ingredients which are constantly causing a problem.  Redesign if you can or on the next EPD round, reduce pH, change leaf for one less susceptible for example. 

If for some reason you can't, it's tricky to do but if you have a situation where you have a positive result, at presumptive, do you send off the retained sample(s) for testing as well?  That way you can at least start to build data for start and end of life.  But it will be hit and miss and might show you something you don't want to know....

Because will it cause more recalls?  No, as you rightly say, by the time your confirmed results are in, it's out of life.  But could it lead to legal action?  Not sure...  I will hand that over to the legal brains.  But right now if you have a death and they link it through WGS to your site, it's linked even if the counts were <100 cfu g^-1.  They don't actually need to prove it was if you think about it.  They just need to prove the pathogen was linked and likely to have come from your production facility.

That's not why I do food safety though.  I do it to prevent deaths as I'm sure you do too.  My one worry with this change in the law is if it reduces testing (as often happens in the US.)

Hello, the European Commission recently opened a public consultation period regarding the modification of the Listeria monocytogenes criteria in Regulation 2073/2005.

During this public consultation period, many interesting opinions were provided on the matter.

You can find them at this link.

Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat foods – update of safety criteria