Exposure assessment of Salmonella spp. in fresh pork meat from two abattoirs in Colombia

Abstract

Salmonella spp. prevails as the main cause of raw meat foodborne illnesses. Implementation of food safety management systems such as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points in swine abattoirs can help to mitigate pathogen exposure. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the impact of the HACCP system in slaughterhouses in Colombia on reducing Salmonella spp. exposure due to the consumption of fresh pork meat. Two slaughtering plants with a different degree of HACCP implementation were selected and a quantitative microbiological mapping was built by collecting 820 samples of Salmonella spp. enumeration at different processing stages. The overall Salmonella spp. mean concentration was 1.15 ± 0.55 log MPN/g, with no significant differences among plants ( P > 0.05). Deficiencies during carcass disinfection and temperature during distribution of meat cuts from the slaughterhouse lacking of HACCP resulted in a significant increase of Salmonella spp. prevalence (20–40%) ( P < 0.05). Processing stages with the highest pathogen prevalence were transport (28–32%) and hanging (16–36%). The exposure assessment model estimated a higher degree of pathogen contamination at the time of consumption in meat cuts from the slaughterhouse without HACCP (3.36 versus 3.68 log MPN/g) and 10-fold increase in the probability a consumer would acquire a contaminated portion (0.011 versus 0.105). Implementation of the HACCP system in swine slaughterhouses represents tangible Salmonella spp. reduction control and public health protection measures.

Critical Analysis of Pork QMRA Focusing on Slaughterhouses: Lessons from the Past and Future Trends

“…and illness risk [53] Minced Pork Belgium, 2009 All Risk assessment for household consumption [27] Risk assessment for food safety improvement [32] Pork meat Colombia, 2020 All Comparative risk assessment to evaluate the impact of HACCP implementation in two slaughterhouses. [35] Burgers Australia, 2018 All Commissioned risk assessment for risk management consulting [44] Ground Pork undergoes a number of process and preparation operations along the meat chain in order to obtain the final product before it is consumed ( Figure 2). This meat chain is constituted by four stages: on farm is where piglets are reared to obtain finisher pig; slaughterhouse corresponds to the place were pigs are processed to carcasses; retail assure carcass butchering and distribution to consumer while the final consumption part is were meat is cooked and consumed.…”

“…The QMRA studies dealt with three bacterial pathogens starting with Salmonella spp. [22,24,25,27,28,32,34,35,[38][39][40][41][42]47,[50][51][52][53][57][58][59]61,63,64], Listeria monocytogenes [37,49] and Staphylococcus aureus [30,48,62] including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The remaining papers focused on three parasites (Toxoplasma gondii [26,29,43], Trichinella spiralis [36,54,55], Taenia solium [60]) and a virus (HEV [31]).…”

“…Each slaughterhouse step has been described with an emphasis on their respective impact on contamination prevalence and levels of the product (Table 3). When considered in QMRA, transportation and lairage step may cause an increase in the prevalence of infected animals [27,32,35,50,51,56,57,61,64]. For example, the transportation to lairage stage facilitates the mixing of animals and, hence, the cross-contamination of pigs from different regions, farms or pens [50].…”

“…During this stage, pigs can excrete Salmonella spp. in their feces, spread it in the environment and on their skin and cross contaminate other animals [27,32,35,50,51,56,57,61,64]. For example, Bollaerts et al [27] found that after transport and lairage, 35.3% of the pigs are internally infected in the lymph nodes or/and the intestines and 20.6% of pigs are externally contaminated compared to 31.3% of seroprevalence of pigs at primary production.…”

“…As aforementioned, the slaughterhouse is one of the most documented parts of the meat chain with QMRAs [25,27,28,32,35,41,46,47,50,51,[56][57][58]61,63,64]. Meat processing appears as a significant contributor to the final contamination of meat and meat products because it is a place that is favorable to the spread of Salmonella spp.…”