Quality and Microbiological Safety of Raw and Fully-cooked Poultry, Poultry Products and Shell Eggs

cooked poultry that gives the appearance that the product is undercooked and therefore unsafe for human consumption. Commercially, red discoloration results in millions of pounds of returned products, lost sales and even lost customers. A series of experiments will be conducted to establish a model system for studying ways of eliminating or reduce red discoloration in fully-cooked poultry. Other studies will be conducted to determine the causative agent and establish methods for controlling, reducing or eliminating red discoloration of fully-cooked poultry. The other portion of this project focuses on ice as a vehicle for cross-contamination of poultry and novel treatments that may reduce bacteria on shell eggs and poultry meat. Ice from commercial ice-packed poultry will be tested for bacteria and total solids. The effectiveness of ice recycling programs will be tested. Survival of Listeria in ice will be evaluated using a strain of Listeria that does not cause illness. Effectiveness of sanitizers on shell eggs will be tested for reducing surface contamination.

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APPROACH: Objective 1: A model system for red discoloration will be developed using bone marrow recovered from broiler femurs. Marrow will be blended with ground chicken and turkey breast, packaged and cooked to an end point temperature of approximately 82 C. Color will measured using a Minolta Handheld Colorimeter. Various combinations of marrow-extract will be tested to create the model system. Once the model system has been successfully created, the causative agent will be determined using dialysis and SDS-PAGE analyses compared to known standards. The isolated causative agent will be confirmed by added it back to raw, ground poultry and cooking to determine if the resulting meat + agent have the red discoloration. Additional studies will be conducted to determine if additives such as non-fat-dry milk, EDTA, or citric acid will reduce or eliminate the red discoloration. <P>

Objective 2: An initial experiment will evaluate ice as a source of contamination in a commercial poultry processing plant. Ice will be collected before being used, after direct product contact, washing for reuse, or condemnation (visible inspection shows cannot be reused). Ice from all sources will be evaluated microbiologically (total aerobes, Enterobacteriaceae, E. coli/coliforms) and chemically (total solids, total suspended solids, total Kjeldahl nitrogen, chemical oxygen demand).A second study will be conducted to evaluate the survivability of Listeria survival in ice. This study will use a non-pathogenic strain of Listeria spp. that will be inoculated into sterile solutions of tap water, phosphate buffered saline (PBS), and poultry exudate (pre-treatment bacterial levels). A third experiment will be conducted to evaluate the use of different antimicrobial treatments on surface contamination of shell eggs. Eggs are routinely sanitized using 200 ppm chlorine; however, the pH of this is not controlled and it is well above the pH that provides the greatest efficacy against surface contamination.