Research on factors allowing a risk assessment of spore-forming pathogenicbacteria in cooked chilled foods containing vegetables: a FAIR collaborative project

Vegetables are frequent ingredients of cooked chilled foods and are frequen tly contaminated with spore-forming bacteria (SFB). Therefore, risk assessm ent studies have been carried out, including the following: hazard identifi cation and characterisation - from an extensive literature review and exper tise of the participants, B. cereus and C. botulinum were identified as the main hazards; exposure assessment - consisting of determination of the pre valence of hazardous SFB in cooked chilled foods containing vegetables and in unprocessed vegetables, and identification of SFB representative of the bacterial community in cooked chilled foods containing vegetables, determin ation of heat-resistance parameters and factors affecting heat resistance o f SFB, determination of the growth kinetics of SFB in vegetable substrate a nd of the influence of controlling factors, validation of previous work in complex food systems and by challenge testing and information about process and storage conditions of cooked chilled foods containing vegetables. The paper illustrates some original results obtained in the course of the proje ct. The results and information collected from scientific literature or fro m the expertise of the participants are integrated into the microbial risk assessment, using both a Bayesian belief network approach and a process ris k model approach, previously applied to other foodborne hazards. (C) 2000 E lsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.