“…Limited research on the antimicrobial effect of phosphates has been done (Tompkin, 1984). Some researchers observed antimicrobial effects of phosphates on Staphylococcus (Chen et al, 1973), Salmonella (Foster and Mead, 1976), C. botulinum in pork slurries (Tanaka et al, 1977), Moraxella (Firstenberg-Eden et al, 1981), in poultry meat emulsions with sorbate (Nelson et al, 1983), and media with sorbate (Wagner and Busta, 1984). Mechanisms suggested for this inhibition include the interference of phosphate with divalent cation metabolism by chelating (Post et al, 1963;Firstenberg-Eden et al, 1981), increasing the ionic strenth or pH inhibition (Ivey and Robach, 1978), and enzyme inhibition (Tarr et al, 1969).…”