Salmonella Prevention Techniques

Khinouche says the dry nature of SurroNov reduces the impact on the physical-chemical properties of the food matrix. Additional benefits include that these dry surrogates can be directly incorporated into a food matrix without an enrichment step; there is a guaranteed inoculation concentration and more favorable heat resistance to the target pathogen compared with liquid surrogates; and there’s also the ability to reach higher inoculation levels than methods using liquid surrogates, up to 10-log colony forming units per gram.

In July 2017, Novolyze won the prestigious International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) Food Safety Innovation Award for its development of this first-of-its-kind Salmonella surrogate.

Khinouche is quick to emphasize that low moisture foods producers didn’t have a safe, user friendly, cost effective method to validate their processes until the game changing Novolyze dry surrogates were introduced commercially in 2016.

“That is why we won the IAFP award,” he boasts. “We believe in-plant process use of SurroNov surrogates is one of the easiest, safest, and fastest ways to validate a kill step and ensure compliance with the FSMA Preventive Controls for Human Food.”

Maximizing the microbiological safety of processed food with surrogate trials is definitely a hot topic for food processors, Khinouche adds. “We’re seeing a lot of food companies getting a jump on validation procedures even before acquiring new processing technology,” he points out. “A number of our clients are using our surrogate bacterial preparations at the pilot stage, sometimes right at their equipment vendor’s facilities. The major benefit here is the possibility to test the equipment and its ability to maintain the desired process controls before deciding to make major capital purchases. By taking advantage of our surrogate technology in this way, we believe food processors are better able to insure the soundness of investments that sometimes involve hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Using surrogate bacteria at the pilot stage allows food processors the opportunity to obtain a more precise vision of process efficacy, Khinouche continues. “For some companies, our technology opens the way for significant process optimizations,” he elaborates. “In that regard, the major benefits are a better preservation of the organoleptic and nutritional quality of foods; increased throughput productivity of up to 40 percent or even more; and improvement of sustainability score, such as up to 35 percent less chemicals used for pathogen inactivation.”

On Oct. 31, 2017, Novolyze, which also maintains an affiliate in Cambridge, Mass., was chosen to participate in the second cohort of TERRA, the Food + Ag Tech Accelerator, as one of 18 food and agriculture startups that are deemed most disruptive and progressive. Additionally, in November 2017, Novolyze was awarded grant funds from the French government to develop validation innovations for pre-cut, fresh, and frozen fruits and vegetables.

La Tortilla Factory, Santa Rosa, Calif., manufacturer of 1.2 million tortillas per day, first used SurroNov dry Salmonella surrogate at its 75,000-square-foot plant in early September 2017. “We needed documentation of our thermal processing procedures in order to comply with Food Safety Modernization Act regulations,” says Nathan Wilson, the company’s quality assurance manager. “Since our products typically have water activity of .9 to .99, they are at high risk for bacterial spoilage. So we needed solid data and validation.”

Since SurroNov is a dry product, the La Tortilla Factory team anticipated that the bacterial surrogate would not interfere with the products’ water activity.

“We ran validation tests two times in one week, using 45 grams of SurroNov each to inoculate tortilla dough samples on numerous production lines and in several ovens,” Wilson relates. “We tested samples after the heated press step that precedes the oven, and then after cooling of the finished product coming from the oven. We did due diligence with inoculated samples and controls.”