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Food Microbiology

Spatiotemporal Distribution of the Environmental Microbiota in Food Processing Plants as Impacted by Cleaning and Sanitizing Procedures: the Case of Slaughterhouses and Gaseous Ozone

Cristian Botta, Ilario Ferrocino, Alessandro Pessione, Luca Cocolin, Kalliopi Rantsiou
Christopher A. Elkins, Editor
Cristian Botta
aDepartment of Agriculture, Forestry, and Food Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
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Ilario Ferrocino
aDepartment of Agriculture, Forestry, and Food Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
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Alessandro Pessione
bLaemmegroup s.r.l., Moncalieri, Italy
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Luca Cocolin
aDepartment of Agriculture, Forestry, and Food Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
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Kalliopi Rantsiou
aDepartment of Agriculture, Forestry, and Food Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
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  • ORCID record for Kalliopi Rantsiou
Christopher A. Elkins
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Roles: Editor
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DOI: 10.1128/AEM.01861-20
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ABSTRACT

Microbial complexity and contamination levels in food processing plants heavily impact the final product fate and are mainly controlled by proper environmental cleaning and sanitizing. Among the emerging disinfection technologies, ozonation is considered an effective strategy to improve the ordinary cleaning and sanitizing of slaughterhouses. However, its effects on contamination levels and environmental microbiota still need to be understood. For this purpose, we monitored the changes in microbiota composition in different slaughterhouse environments during the phases of cleaning/sanitizing and ozonation at 40, 20, or 4 ppm. Overall, the meat processing plant microbiota differed significantly between secondary processing rooms and deboning rooms, with a greater presence of psychrotrophic taxa in secondary processing rooms because of their lower temperatures. Cleaning/sanitizing procedures significantly reduced the contamination levels and in parallel increased the number of detectable operational taxonomic units (OTUs), by removing the masking effect of the most abundant human/animal-derived OTUs, which belonged to the phylum Firmicutes. Subsequently, ozonation at 40 or 20 ppm effectively decreased the remaining viable bacterial populations. However, we could observe selective ozone-mediated inactivation of psychrotrophic bacteria only in the secondary processing rooms. There, the Brochothrix and Pseudomonas abundances and their viable counts were significantly affected by 40 or 20 ppm of ozone, while more ubiquitous genera like Staphylococcus showed a remarkable resistance to the same treatments. This study showed the effectiveness of highly concentrated gaseous ozone as an adjunct sanitizing method that can minimize cross-contamination and so extend the meat shelf life.

IMPORTANCE Our in situ survey demonstrates that RNA-based sequencing of 16S rRNA amplicons is a reliable approach to qualitatively probe, at high taxonomic resolution, the changes triggered by new and existing cleaning/sanitizing strategies in the environmental microbiota in human-built environments. This approach could soon represent a fast tool to clearly define which routine sanitizing interventions are more suitable for a specific food processing environment, thus limiting the costs of special cleaning interventions and potential product loss.

FOOTNOTES

    • Received 30 July 2020.
    • Accepted 15 September 2020.
    • Accepted manuscript posted online 25 September 2020.
  • Supplemental material is available online only.

  • Copyright © 2020 American Society for Microbiology.

All Rights Reserved.

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Spatiotemporal Distribution of the Environmental Microbiota in Food Processing Plants as Impacted by Cleaning and Sanitizing Procedures: the Case of Slaughterhouses and Gaseous Ozone
Cristian Botta, Ilario Ferrocino, Alessandro Pessione, Luca Cocolin, Kalliopi Rantsiou
Applied and Environmental Microbiology Nov 2020, 86 (23) e01861-20; DOI: 10.1128/AEM.01861-20

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Spatiotemporal Distribution of the Environmental Microbiota in Food Processing Plants as Impacted by Cleaning and Sanitizing Procedures: the Case of Slaughterhouses and Gaseous Ozone
Cristian Botta, Ilario Ferrocino, Alessandro Pessione, Luca Cocolin, Kalliopi Rantsiou
Applied and Environmental Microbiology Nov 2020, 86 (23) e01861-20; DOI: 10.1128/AEM.01861-20
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KEYWORDS

gaseous ozone
RNA-based surveillance
meat processing plants
spoilage bacteria
environmental microbiota

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