Organic acids as an alternative method to control Salmonella enterica serotype Choleraesuis and Listeria monocytogenes in pork jowl fat

The increasing incidence of foodborne illnesses worldwide has become an economic and public health problem. In order to reduce the risks associated with food safety, the Normative Instruction n degrees 79, 2018, modified the inspection of jowl in pork slaughterhouses in Brazil and requires the submission to validated treatments such as heat or other methods approved. Therefore, the present study evaluated the behavior of Salmonella enterica (S. enterica) serotype Choleraesuis and Listeria monocytogenes (L. monocytogenes) inoculated in fresh pork jowl fat treated with different concentrations of organic acids (lactic, acetic, citric, ascorbic, and glycolic) during different times (1, 5, and 10 min) to meet the Normative Instruction. The lactic, acetic and glycolic acids had the lowest minimum inhibitory concentration (0.08; 0.08 and 0.11; 0.09 and 0.13%, respectively) for both bacteria evaluated. The susceptibility results showed that the increasing exposure time reduced the acid concentration used to inhibit the growth of both bacteria previously inoculated. A great efficiency was observed for lactic acid, with reductions of 1.25 Log(10) CFU/g using concentrations of 1.06% on S. enterica serovar Choleraesuis and reduction of 1.23 Log(10) CFU/g using 0.64% on L. monocytogenes, with 10 min exposure. Acetic and glycolic acids also presented satisfactory microbial reductions with similar results (1.0 and 0.98 Log(10) CFU/g for S. enterica, and 0.85 and 0.87 Log(10) CFU/g for L. monocytogenes, respectively). It was concluded that the organic acids (lactic, acetic, and glycolic) have potential for industrial use in microbiological control of pork jowl fat.