THE APPLICATION OF THE HAZARD ANALYSIS CR ITICAL CONTROL POINT CONCEPT TO A CATTLE SLAUGHTER LINE

Hind legs, briskets and necks from 25 male beef carcases were sampled by swab and destructive sampling techniques immediately after dehiding , evisceration and entering the chilling room. From a total of 300 sam ples, 225 were collected using the swab technique, the remaining ones were collected by destructive sampling technique, which was applied on ly on carcases entering the chilling room. For aerobic plate counts (A PC) and enterobacteriaceae (EN), the highest counts of microorganisms were recorded with the destructive sampling method. Using this method an APC contamination level of log10 5.0 CfU/20 cm2, and an EN contamin ation level of log10 0.2 CfU/20 cm2 was registered. The briskets were higher contaminated at all sampling stations than the hind quarters an d the necks. Briskets therefore were considered sampling sites for evi sceration and dehiding which were chosen as Critical Control Points (C CP) within the Hazard Analysis critical control point (HACCP) system. Swab sampling was sufficient to determine CCP's during the slaughterin g process but was less effective than the destructive method which can be applied e.g. in chilling rooms for control of end products or for confirmation of swab sampling results.