Elsevier

Food Control

Volume 14, Issue 3, April 2003, Pages 207-209
Food Control

Comment
The EC decision of the 8th June 2001 (EC/471/2001): excision versus swabbing

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0956-7135(02)00093-2Get rights and content

Introduction

The EC Decision of the 8th June, 2001 sets out two primary requirements for the EU meat and poultry industries:

  • 1.

    The requirement for full HACCP (seven principles)

  • 2.

    The achievement of microbial performance standards


Excision is the preferred method of carcass sampling and the annex to the Decision sets out a performance standard solely relating to this technique and describes how samples are to be taken and processed. Non-destructive swabbing, using the wet and dry technique, is also permitted if a correlation can be established with excision. Given that the regulatory function favours excision and the EU meat industry have a preference for swabbing, the following is a short review of the literature on the topic of excision versus swabbing as microbial sampling techniques for meat carcasses.

Section snippets

Literature review

The is no consensus in the literature on the most appropriate carcass sampling technique. While excision was traditionally considered to be the most effective bacterial carcass sampling method (Fliss, Simard, & Ettriki, 1991; Ingram & Roberts, 1976; Rivas, Herrera, & Arino, 1993 Snijders, Janssen, Gerats, & Corstiaensen, 1984), recent research suggests that swabbing with abrasive materials may be a suitable alternative (Dorsa, Cutter, & Siragusa, 1996; Gill & Jones, 2000; Ware, Kain, Sofos,

Conclusion

From this short review it may be concluded that:

  • •

    excision is the most effective technique for bacterial recovery from beef and pork carcasses;

  • •

    swabbing usually covers a larger area of the carcass than excision and may be more reliable when trying to detect pathogens such as E. coli O157 or Salmonella which may have a low incidence and uneven distribution on meat carcasses;

  • •

    the effectiveness of bacterial recovery with sponge swabbing increases with material abrasiveness but decreases with carcass

Acknowledgments

Research on carcass sampling techniques at The National Food Centre is funded by the Food Institutional Research Measure, administered by the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development.

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    This would increase the variance, as swabbing is subject to operator variability and several other factors, including the carcass surface, the moisture, the temperature, the pressure applied, the number of strokes used, the size of the swabbing area, and other operator-related differences (Byrne, Dunne, Lyng, & Bolton, 2005). Swabbing covers large areas and may be more reliable than excision for sampling carcasses with low numbers of bacteria spread unevenly on the carcass surface (Bolton, 2003). The sampling was conducted by the abattoirs' quality managers or other trained personnel that are experienced in sampling carcasses.

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    However, it has also been suggested that swabbing with abrasive materials (sponges) could be a suitable alternative to excision (Capita et al., 2004; Gill & Jones, 2000; Ware et al., 1999). Furthermore, a quantitative conversion factor between destructive and non-destructive methods has not yet been established (Bolton, 2003). The efficacy of excision and non-destructive sampling methods has been variously compared: excision is the preferred sampling method for the recovery of bacteria from beef and swine carcasses according to studies comparing excision to wet-dry techniques (Bolton, 2003; Capita et al., 2004).

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    In order to establish a universal conversion factor between the results obtained by using the excision and swabbing sampling methods, all the factors listed above should be taken into account (Bolton, 2003). To date, no conversion factor between results obtained by excision and swabbing has been able to set, and the relationship between the results from the sampling by different methods for sheep has been low (Bolton, 2003; Capita, Prieto, & Alonso-Calleja, 2004; Hutchison et al., 2005; Martínez et al., 2009). In many studies, the bacterial counts from sampling by excision have been significantly higher than by swabbing, although swabbing has been shown to give relatively similar results with those collected by excision when swabbing was done more abrasively (Byrne et al., 2005; Dorsa et al., 1996; Gill & Jones, 2000; Martínez et al., 2009, 2010; Pearce & Bolton, 2005; Pepperell et al., 2005).

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