Major achievements in HURDLETECH

Hurdle technology (including minimal processing) to ensure quality and safety of convenience seafood

The seafood products that will be studied have been chosen during the first reporting period, and a common unique European collection of target strains for pathogens and spoilage have been created and typed. The first results show an extensive survival of three target strains both during salting and freezing. The remarkably high salt tolerance of the selected strains indicates that these bacteria could survive cod salt-curing, recover after rehydration in the ready-to-use product, and thereby represent a risk.

The antilisterial activity of three Carnobacteria has been tested against a wide collection of L. monocytogenes and two of them gave very promising results. New protective cultures are currently selected and identified. Standard protocols have been established to test the efficacy of pulsed light technology. Results on L. innocua showed that pulsed light treatment readily inactivated L. innocua at relatively low doses and short treatment time. However in the model media, the effect depends on the intensity of a single pulse, number of pulses/duration and distance of the sample to the lamp.

People in this project