| Role of microbiological criteria and value of sampling (2007) | |||||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||||
| Sampling of end products or imported products, and monitoring of processes is an important means for checking safety of food products and to determine if a process is under control. Sampling can however, never guarantee 100% safety. Therefore safety systems cannot be based on end-product testing only. It is, however, important for inspection, to verify that hazards are under control, and to trace defective batches. Especially for very infective organisms, target concentrations are so low that even if many batches are found to be negative, this is no proof of a safe product. Probabilities of acceptance/rejection are presented depending on the defective rate. Furthermore, the effect of distributions of microorganisms, and specifically the log-normal distribution will be illustrated. Various sampling plans (2-class/3-class) are proposed, depending on the severity of the hazard, and depending on the potentials of growth or inactivation. Also for log-normally distributed organisms and 2 class plans acceptance/rejection characteristics are presented, depending on the contamination rate, microbiological limit set, and number of samples, resulting in an ¿operating characteristic curve¿. Finally it is concluded that sampling is an important instrument that should be used effectively, not to only check, but as one of the tools to control food safety. | |||||||||||
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