Modeling the Reduction and Cross-Contamination of Salmonella in Poultry Chilling Process in China

: The study was to establish a predictive model for reduction and cross-contamination of Salmonella on chicken in chilling process. Reduction of Salmonella on chicken was 0.75 ± 0.04, 0.74 ± 0.08, and 0.79 ± 0.07 log CFU/g with 20, 50, and 100 mg/L of chlorine, respectively. No significant differences of bacterial reductions with 20-100 mg/L of chlorine were found and a Normal (-0.75, 0.1) distribution could describe the uncertainty of bacterial reductions. Inoculated and non-inoculated chicken samples were washed together and bacterial transfer rates among them were 0.13%-0.004% with 20-100 mg/L of chlorine. No significant differences of transfer rates with 50-100 mg/L of chlorine were observed and a Triangle (-2.5, -1.5, -1.1) distribution could describe the log transfer rate. Additionally, a 3-factor response surface model based on the central composite design was developed to evaluate the effects of initial contamination level (1-5 log CFU/g), pre-chill incidence (3%-40%) and chlorine concentration (0-100 mg/L) on post-chill incidence. The post-chill incidences in these treatments were within 30%-91.7%. The developed model showed a satisfactory performance to predict the post-chill incidence as evidenced by statistical indices (pseudo-R² = 0.9; p < 0.0001; RMSE = 0.21) and external validation parameters (B_f = 1.02; A_f = 1.11).