ABSTRACT
The food health regulations from Chile control their manufacturing, distribution and storage. Due to the lack of published data on the implementation of the regulations, we evaluated the continuity of the cold chain in five factories of sausages, using pate and cheese head as control products. The results showed deficiencies in the maintenance of cold chain, mainly in the distribution and retailing of products. In addition, statistically significant differences (Student t test) were detected between the bacterial count of initial sample (at the factory) and final (after 5 days, p<0.05), indicating the breakdown of the cold food chain and the increase in microbial load. Since food preservation has a direct impact on public health of the population, further studies are needed to evaluate the cold chain operation in Chile.
El Reglamento Sanitario de los Alimentos Chileno regula la fabricación, distribución y almacenamiento de éstos. Debido a la falta de datos publicados sobre la aplicación del reglamento, se evaluó la continuidad de la cadena de frío en 5 fábricas de cecinas, utilizando paté y queso de cabeza como productos controles. Los resultados mostraron deficiencias en la mantención de la cadena de frío, principalmente en la distribución y venta minorista de productos. Además, se detectaron diferencias estadísticamente significativas (prueba t de Student) entre el recuento bacteriano de muestra inicial (en la fábrica) y una final (después de 5 días), P< 0,05) indicando la ruptura de la cadena de frío en alimentos con el aumento de su carga microbiológica. Debido a que la conservación de alimentos repercute directamente en la salud pública de la población, se necesita de otros estudios para evaluar el funcionamiento de la cadena de frío en Chile.
Subject(s)
Refrigeration , Colony Count, Microbial , Food Industry , Commerce , Meat , ChileABSTRACT
Subjects and methods: Serum calcium was measured in 731 subjects participating in a preventive medical examination, using an automated colorimetric method. Serum albumin was also measured. In 31 randomly chosen serum samples, calcium was also measured by atomic absorption spectrometry. Normal serum calcium ranges were established as the mean ñ 1.34 SD of the sample. Results: Mean serum calcium was 9 ñ 0.7 mg/dl, serum albumin was 4.3 ñ 0.5 g/dl and albumin corrected calcium levels were 8.7 ñ 0.7 mg/dl. Excluding lipemic sera, colorimetric calcium measurement had a correlation of 6.0 with atomic absorption spectrometry and a reliability of 17.9 percent. Using the proposed normal ranges (7.3 - 10.6 mg/dl), the frequency of hypercalcemia and hypocalcemia was 0.14 and 0.4 percent respectively. Conclusions: Most subjects found to have hyper or hypocalcemia in this study were asymptomatic