Recovery of heat-injured Listeria monocytogenes.

Concern has been expressed that the ability of heat-injured Listeria monocytogenes cells to resuscitate during refrigerated storage of food may lead to underestimation of their heat resistance. The recovery of heat-injured L. monocytogenes was therefore examined as a function of incubation temperature and composition of recovery medium. Heat-injured cells exhibited a broad optimum temperature for recovery centered around 20-25 degrees C. The best recovery medium of those tested was blood agar. Incubation of cells in broth or chicken slurry at 5 degrees C (cold-enrichment) did not allow repair of potentially lethal injury i.e. it did not allow recovery of cells that would otherwise have died if incubated at a higher temperature. In some cases incubation of heat-injured cells at 5 degrees C resulted in death of a proportion of the population. Repair of sublethal heat-injury, measured as the time of incubation in tryptone soya broth needed to regain the ability to grow on Listeria selective agar, was slower and less complete at 25 degrees C than at 2 degrees C; repair took 10-15 h at 25 degrees C compared with 8-12 days at 5 degrees C. Refrigeration of heat-treated foods should not therefore increase the risk that heat-injured cells will recover from the heat treatment.

A predictive model for the combined effect of pH, sodium chloride and storage temperature on the growth of Brochothrix thermosphacta.

Growth of Brochothrix thermosphacta was observed under ranges of pH (5.6-6.8), NaCl (0.5-8.0% w/v) and incubation temperature (1-30 degrees C). In order to compare different approaches, two models were used to fit growth curves to viable count data, and to calculate parameters from those fitted curves. Growth responses as a function of pH, NaCl and temperature were described with a quadratic function which was then used to predict growth within the limits where growth was observed. The predictions of the model show good agreement with published observations from other laboratories.