As we can find no evidence for enterococci
being correlated with the number of Salmonella in the gastrointestinal
tract of pigs and cattle, the positive correlation in
minced meat is suggested to be associated with simultaneous
cross-contamination and growth of Salmonella and enterococci
during meat processing. Thus, results in Fig. 3 indicated that
minced meat samples with more than 500 CFU/g of enterococci
must have been subjected to temperature conditions supporting
growth of Salmonella i.e. temperatures above 5 C.