The Pork Meat or the Environment of the Production Facility? The Effect of Individual Technological Steps on the Bacterial Contamination in Cooked Hams

Helena Veselá; Kateřina Dorotíková; Marta Dušková; Petra Furmančíková; Ondrej Šedo; Josef Kameník

doi:10.3390/microorganisms10061106

The Pork Meat or the Environment of the Production Facility? The Effect of Individual Technological Steps on the Bacterial Contamination in Cooked Hams

Microorganisms. 2022 May 27;10(6):1106. doi: 10.3390/microorganisms10061106.

Authors

Helena Veselá¹, Kateřina Dorotíková¹, Marta Dušková¹, Petra Furmančíková¹, Ondrej Šedo², Josef Kameník¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Animal Origin Food and Gastronomic Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Hygiene and Ecology, University of Veterinary Sciences Brno, 612 42 Brno, Czech Republic.
² Central European Institute of Technology, Masaryk University, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyse the influence of the contamination level of fresh meat on the bacterial population in raw material before cooking and on the microbiota of cooked hams following heat treatment. The effect of incubation temperatures of 6.5 and 15 °C on the results obtained was also evaluated during the bacteriological investigation. The total viable count (TVC), the number of Enterobacteriaceae and lactic acid bacteria (LAB) were determined in the samples. LAB were isolated from 13 samples out of the 50 fresh meat samples. The species most frequently detected included Latilactobacillus sakei, Leuconostoc carnosum, Enterococcus gilvus, Latilactobacillus curvatus, and Leuconostoc gelidum. The meat sampled after the brine injection and tumbler massaging showed higher bacterial counts compared to fresh meat samples (p < 0.001). The heat treatment destroyed the majority of the bacteria, as the bacterial counts were beneath the limit of detection with a few exceptions. Although the primary cultivation of samples of cooked hams did not reveal the presence of LAB, their presence was confirmed in 11 out of 12 samples by a stability test. Bacteria of the genus Leuconostoc were the most numerous.

Keywords: MALDI-TOF MS; fresh meat; incubation temperature; lactic acid bacteria; microbiota; tumbled meat.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the University of Veterinary Sciences Brno project 2021/ITA25. CIISB, Instruct-CZ Centre of the Instruct-ERIC EU consortium, funded by MEYS CR infrastructure project LM2018127, is gratefully acknowledged for the financial support of the measurements at the CEITEC Proteomics Core Facility.