Effect of steam, lactic acid and combined treatments for inactivating Campylobacter jejuni inoculated on chicken skin

Raw poultry carcasses are often contaminated with pathogens, including Salmonella spp., Campylobacter jejuni and Listeria monocytogenes. Campylobacteriosis is an emerging and one of the most frequently reported zoonotic infectious disease. Further to the best management practices in husbandry, slaughtering and processing, decontaminating treatments might be required to control microbial hazards. A previous study has shown that combining heat and lactic acid treatments for decontaminating chicken skin inoculated with Listeria innocua or Salmonella Enteritidis seems particularly promising as it cumulates the advantages of each treatment: an immediate bacterial reduction due to the heat treatment while acid treatments leads to a bacteriostatic or bactericidal effect during storage. After 7 days of storage at 4°C, the combined treatment was even more effective than each single treatment. EggMeat Symposia 2011 c-058 The present work evaluated the effectiveness of lactic acid, heat and combined heat and lactic acid treatments for inactivating Campylobacter jejuni. Chicken skins were inoculated with Campylobacter jejuni (6.5 log10 cfu.cm) and treated with steam (100 °C during 8 s) and/or lactic acid (5% v/v for 1 min at 25 °C). Residual bacteria on the skin were enumerated immediately after treatment and after 7 days of storage at 4°C. Bacterial concentration was expressed in log10 cfu.cm. Each treatment was repeated 5 times. Results showed a reduction of 1.5 log cfu.cm thanks to the lactic acid treatment compare to the control directly after treatment. After 7 days of storage, results showed a remaining bactericidal effect of the unrised off acid treatment with a reduction of 3.9 log cfu.cm. With a rinse off, the reduction of 1.5 log ufc.cm is significantly lower. Heat treatment and combined treatments were very efficient at T0 and T7 with reductions of, respectively, 5 and 4 log cfu.cm.