As mentioned above a vast number of studies in meat microbiology have established that spoilage is caused only by the fraction of the initial microbial association that dominates. Although similar genera have been reported in the literature as dominating in this fraction, the findings at the species level are diverse. The domince of various species (ephemeral spoilage) with a the genus is also of importance. This concept has contributed significantly to our understanding, of meat foods spoilage. The range of microbial taxa found in meat under various storage conditions
is given in Table 1. A consortium of bacteria, commonly dominated by Pseudomonas spp., is in most cases responsible for spoilage of meat stored aerobically at different temperatures (-1 to 25C) (Table 2). It is now well established that under aerobic storage three species of Pseudomonas, Ps. fragi, Ps. fluorescens and Ps. lundensis are the most important. The population of pseudomonads to the arbitrary level of 1078 CFU/g, has been attributed to slime and off-odors
formation (Tables 3 and 4). However, in practice both these characteristics become evident when the pseudomonads have exhausted the glucose and lactate present in meat and begin to metabolise nitrogenous compounds such as amino acids (Table 5).