Evaluation of commercial anti-listerial products for improvement of food safety in ready-to-eat meat and dairy products

Abstract

In ready-to-eat products, such as cooked ham, fresh cheese, and in which is a concern, the use of biopreservation techniques represents an additional hurdle to inhibit pathogen growth during storage. The objective of this study was to apply several biopreservation techniques in three different food matrices to reduce the growth of , used as a surrogate of . Several lactic acid bacteria, the bacteriocin nisin, the bacteriophage PhageGuard Listex P100, and the enzyme lysozyme were evaluated. Cooked ham treated with the bacteriophage PhageGuard Listex at 0.5% or with the lactic acid bacteria SafePro B-SF-43 (25 g/100 kg) reduced population to below the detection limit after 7 days of storage (4 °C plus modified atmosphere packaging). In fresh cheese, the application of PhageGuard Listex at 0.2 and 0.5% reduced counts by more than 3.4 logarithmic units after 6 days at 4 °C. In , the 1.0% of PhageGuard Listex reduced population by 0.7 ± 0.2 logarithmic units in front of control with no significant differences to other evaluated biopreservative agents. The present results confirm that the application of biopreservation techniques was able to inhibit in , cooked ham, and fresh cheese, and suggest that the type of food matrix and its physicochemical characteristics influence the biopreservative efficacy.