New Program Predicts Salmonella Levels in Pork

Warning: don’t read the following if you’ve recently dined on pig! A new program developed by the UK’s Institute of Food Research, the US Department of Agriculture, and Australia’s Food Safety Centre seeks to predict the amount of Salmonella present on different levels of the pork supply chain.
Tracing the cause of Salmonella, or any bacterial contamination, along a food supply chain can be difficult due to different environmental conditions, so the foundation of the program was Combase, a database of microbial growth data in various environmental conditions from previous research. Taking into account the temperature, pH, and water activity of actual processing conditions, the program can give accurate probabilistic and kinetic models of Salmonella concentration.
The program’s predictions have been validated with comparisons to actual pork products.
Certainly a helpful tool for meat packagers, but as consumers please remember to cook your pork thoroughly to at least 160 °F (71 °C) so any salmonella in the pork supply chain doesn’t end up on your plate.
Article from Food Production Daily: New software tool to predict Salmonella levels in pork…
Journal article: Modelling Salmonella concentration throughout the pork supply chain by considering growth and survival in fluctuating conditions of temperature, pH and a(w)
Image credit: NIH