Hidekazu Hokunan, Kento Koyama, Mayumi Hasegawa, Shuso Kawamura, Shigenobu Koseki
JOURNAL OF FOOD PROTECTION 79 (10) 1680 - 1692 0362-028X 2016/10
[Refereed][Not invited] We investigated the survival kinetics of Salmonella enterica and enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli under various water activity (a(w)) conditions to elucidate the net effect of a(w) on pathogen survival kinetics and to pursue the development of a predictive model of pathogen survival as a function of a(w). Four serotypes of S. enterica (Stanley, Typhimurium, Chester, and Oranienburg) and three serotypes of enterohemorrhagic E. coli (E. coli 026, E. coli 0111, and E. coli 0157:H7) were examined. These bacterial strains were inoculated on a plastic plate surface at a constant relative humidity (RH) (22, 43, 58, 68; or 93% RH, corresponding to the a) or on a surface of almond kernels (a(w) 0.58), chocolate (a(w) 0.43), radish sprout seeds. (a(w) 0.58), or Cheddar cheese (a(w) 0.93) at 5, 15, or 25 C for up to 11 months. Under most conditions, the survival kinetics were nonlinear with tailing regardless of the storage a(w), temperature, and bacterial strain. For all bacterial serotypes, there were no apparent differences in pathogen survival kinetics on the plastic surface at a given storage temperature among the tested RH conditions, except for the 93% RH condition. Most bacterial serotypes were rapidly inactivated on Cheddar cheese when stored at 5 degrees C compared with their inactivation on chocolate, almonds, and radish sprout seeds. Distinct trends in bacterial survival kinetics were also observed between almond kernels and radish sprout seeds, even though the a(w)s of these two foods were not significantly different. The survival kinetics of bacteria inoculated on the plastic plate surface showed little correspondence to those of bacteria inoculated on food matrices at an identical a(w). Thus, these results demonstrated that, for low-a(w) foods and/or environments, a alone is insufficient to account for the survival kinetics of S. enterica and enterohemorrhagic E. coli.