Best Practice to Reduce Microbial Contamination at Meat Retail

Summary

A microbiological survey of retail product conducted by Meat & Livestock Australia during 2004-05 indicated that although micro indicators of hygience and imminent spoilage on carcases and trim were only present at low frequencies and concentration at retail, levels were higher than expected.
Escherichia coli - E. coli - was detected in nearly 20% of samples, and Staphylococcus aureus - S. aureus - was detected in 25% of samples.
This posed the question: was the product being kept at higher that acceptable temperatures, or was contamination arising from handlers and/or equipment at a retail level? More importantly, what could be done to identify the likely cause of the rise in spoilage indicator organisms on retail product, and subsequently, what could be done to reduce these levels?
Previous reports examined the effect of retail personnel wearing gloves when handling raw product and the use of steam cleaning of utensils, equipment and cutting boards following normal store cleaning procedures in an attempt to reduce overall microbial loads of retail meat products.
However, the results of these studies were inconclusive. One outcome from the previous work was that minced meat counts were both high, and appeared to be related to in-going trim.
The present project examined in-going trim in greater detail by sampling at three types of retail butcher operations:a major supermarket storea large meat wholesaler/butchera typical suburban butcher shop
At each venue hygiene indicators were monitored both for in-going trim and for finished product. The present report describes the microbiological counts obtained in this work.