exists. Furthermore, since many of these
products are marketed in packages that
consumers view as trditionally containing
shelf stable items, there is a high
risk for consumer temperature abuse,
mishandling, and over extending the
product’s shelf life (Corlett 1989).
In order to ensure the market growth
of this new generation of minimally processed
products, the onus lies with the
processor to ensure the microbiological
safety of sous vide processed products at
all stages of processing, distribution,
marketing and retailing up to the point of
consumption by the consumer. While the
traditional approach to microbiological
quality control involves end product sampling
and analyses, this approach has
several disadvantages for sous vide processed
products: (1) microbiological tests
are laborious and time consuming and
may generate results too late for corrective
action to be taken for a specific batch
of product, (2) the test methods employed
may not be sensitive enough to detect low
numbers of pathogen(s) present in sous
vide products, and (3) microbiological test
results provide no information concerning
the sources of contamination/
microbial growth in the end product or
the locations in the process for corrective
action to prevent future microbial
contamination/growth.
To overcome the limitations