Enhancing the safety of high pressure processed juices

HPP treated juices are required by the FDA Juice HACCP regulations to demonstrate the reduction of 5 log CFU/ml of the pertinent organism in the juice and even though HPP treated juices are currently available at retail, there is currently no consensus amongst industry, academia and government on a "standardized" validation protocol for juices to be treated by HPP. It appears there is no common approach to preparing bacterial strains for validation and challenge studies, no consensus on the HPP parameters required for treatment of the juices and no common approach on how shelf-life studies are conducted.The significance of the proposed project seeks to develop coordinated industry and regulatory science based consensus from the generated data and develop guidance on how validation should be conducted for HPP treated juices much like Clostridium botulinum challenge studies for extended shelf-life refrigerated foods described by Doyle (1991). The proposed project will develop "safe harbor" conditions i.e. defined as a recognized procedure that can be employed without further validation studies and approved as delivering a safe product and when implemented in industry, can be assured that the foodborne hazards are controlled during production and delivery of a safe product to consumers. The development of the "safe harbor" concept will allow government and regulators to better understanding of the technology to make regulations based on sound science and provide quicker turn-arounds for validation approvals. The proposed project will also provide guidance for industry laboratories or academia evaluating the microbiological safety of HPP treated juices to follow a reliable protocol to quickly detect and easily assess microbiological safety with confidence.The goal of the proposed project is as followsDevelop HPP validation guidelines and define "safe harbor" and processing critical limits to enhance the safety of HPP treated juices.The objectives of the project are as followsScreen bacterial isolates for HPP resistance, select final sets of bacterial isolates for validation studies and quantify the effect of juice matrices on bacterial inactivationDefine HPP parameters that affect inactivation of selected bacterial isolatesDetermine impact of recovery procedures on enrichment of target bacterial isolatesDefine protocol for shelf-life analysis of HPP treated juicesDevelop and disseminate guidance document for the HPP treated juices