PMID: 7546448Mar 1, 1995Paper

Escherichia coli, other Enterobacteriaceae and additional indicators as markers of microbiologic quality of food: advantages and limitations

Microbiología : Publicación De La Sociedad Española De Microbiología
D A Mossel, C B Struijk

Abstract

The 93/43 European Union directive assigns to the food and catering industries the main responsibility for an integrated safety and quality assurance strategy in the food chain. Relying on hazard analysis, followed by design and adoption of control of all critical points and practices ("HACCP"). Hiatus-free compliance with such HACCP-based Codes of Good Practices is to be assessed by monitoring, recording results on process performance charts and gauging such data against experimentally established, attainable and maintainable references ranges ("standards"). Marker microorganisms are a major analytical tool for validating compliance in the sense of the EU directive. They should be expertly chosen amongst microbes usually present in food so that their, whose presence in quantities exceeding predetermined levels point to a lack of microbiological integrity of a food product. This may encompass (i) the potential presence of taxonomically, physiologically and ecologically related pathogens, markers are called index organisms; or else (ii) a lack of process integrity; in this case, markers are termed indicator organisms. The classical index organism was E. coli, introduced in the 1980's to monitor drinking water supplies. It is sti...Continue Reading

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