Investigation of EC O157 positive lots of raw ground beef components

Summary

​Meat and Livestock Australia has been developing a model to provide a statistical understanding of E. coli O157 contamination of beef trim frozen in cartons.
The model is aimed to help the Australian beef industry to assess the likelihood of contamination being detected both within and across cartons.
It is clear that in order to fully develop the model, data relating to how evenly O157 is spread throughout a lot and the number of O157 that are present in each carton is required.
The model assists in developing a better understanding of these factors to ensure that the Australian beef industry is in a good position to defend its testing practices to the US market and therefore, the disposition of material at the point of entry into the USA.
The aims of this work were to determine the distribution and concentration of Escherichia coli O157 in lots of beef destined for grinding that failed to meet Australian requirements for export, to use these data to better understand the performance of sampling plans based on the binomial distribution, and to consider alternative approaches for evaluating sampling plans.
The results for the study have been published in the Journal of Food Protection.