Validation of a New Method of Sampling Beef Manufacturing Trimmings for Pathogen Testing Using a Manual Sampling Mitt...

The USDA Food Safety Inspection Service has declared Escherichia coli O157:H7, and six additional Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) are adulterants for nonintact raw beef products. The U. S. beef processing industry has implemented several antimicrobial intervention technologies throughout the carcass dressing process to remove or destroy foodborne pathogens present on beef carcasses. Despite these efforts, STEC have been shown to cause finished product contamination, albeit at prevalences typically <0.5%. Recent work described the development and validation of improved methods for collecting samples from raw beef trimmings. One of the methods, the Manual Sampling Device (MSD) method, uses the manual implementation of the MicroTally® Swab (MT-Swab) to vigorously scrub the surface of raw beef manufacturing trimmings for pathogen detection. The work described herein reports the data from an evaluation of a novel MSD method using the MicroTally® Mitt (MT-Mitt). The MT-Mitt provides a more user-friendly option for sample collection than the MT-Swab. A series of trials were conducted with a total of 360 matched samples comparing manual sampling of raw beef manufacturing trimmings using the MT-Swab, N60-excision, or N60-plus methods to a novel method using the MT-Mitt. The results of these trials collectively demonstrate that manual sampling of raw beef manufacturing trimmings using the MT-Mitt provides organism recovery that is not significantly different from that of the MT-Swab, N60-excision, and N60-plus methods. Thus, the MT-Mitt method provides an alternative sampling method with organism recovery that is not significantly different from previous methods for sampling beef manufacturing trimmings for pathogen detection and some implementation advantages pertaining to labor and ease of use.