IN-FIELD COMPARATIVE-EVALUATION OF THE AN TIMICROBIAL EFFECTS OF PLAIN DETERGENTS AND OF BIOCIDES-SUPPLEMENTED DETERGENTS

In a meat industry it has been performed a trial to compare the effici ency of cleaning by a plain detergent and by a biocides supplemented d etergent. New laboratory tools have been used for monitoring the resid ual bacteria onto surfaces and the environmental listeriae: the Surfac e Sampling Kit (Copan Italia, Italy) has proved to be useful for quant itative recovery of living and dead organisms from surfaces; in the el ution fluid it includes a balanced mixture of inactivating agents to o vercome the residual effects of common disinfectants; the LI.SA. (List eria Salmonella) improved the recovery of stressed pathogenic bacteria from disinfected surfaces and the environment. The results suggest th at the addition of biocides (i) lowers the number of bacteria, with pa rticular concern to the Gram negative coliforms, and (ii) improves the control of environmental bacteria such as listeriae.