Comparative study of survival of Escherichia coli O157:H7 inoculated in pork batter after ohmic cooking and water bath cooking

Recovery and virulence factors of sublethally injured Staphylococcus aureus after ohmic heating

Ohmic heating (OH) is an alternative thermal processing technique, which is widely used to pasteurize or sterilize food. However, sublethally injured Staphylococcus aureus induced by OH is a great concern to food safety. The recovery of injured S. aureus by OH and virulence factor changes during recovery were investigated in this study. The liquid media (phosphate-buffered saline, buffered peptone water and nutrient broth (NB)), temperature (4, 25 and 37 °C) and pH (6.0, 7.2 and 8.0) influenced the recovery rate and the injured cells completely repaired in NB at 37 °C, pH 7.2 with the shortest time of 2 h. The biofilm formation ability, mannitol fermentation, hemolysis, and coagulase activities decreased in injured S. aureus and recovered during repair process. Quantitative real-time PCR showed the expression of sek, clfB and lukH involved in virulence factors increased during recovery. The results indicated that the virulence factors of injured S. aureus recovered after repair.

Comparative analysis of quality and microbial safety of ohmic and water bath cooked pork batter during refrigerated storage

In this study, the microbial safety, lipid and protein oxidation, and water characteristics of ohmic (OH) and water bath (WB) cooked pork batter during storage at 4 °C were investigated. The results indicated that the cooking time was much shorter for samples cooked to 72 °C by OH cooking (2 min) than WB cooking (41 min), but OH and WB cooked samples had no significant difference in total viable colony (TVC) at day 28. No significant differences were observed in thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) and total sulfhydryl content between OH and WB cooked samples (P > 0.05), but the OH cooked samples had higher carbonyl content (P < 0.05). Although there were no significant differences for water content and drip loss between OH and WB cooked samples, the relaxation time T ₂₂ of the OH cooked samples were longer than WB cooked ones (P < 0.05). On the whole, the qualities of the OH cooked samples were comparable to the WB cooked ones during the entire storage period, indicating that there was a great prospect for OH cooking to be applied in the meat product industry.