3. Results and discussion
3.1. Microbial populations
Figs. 2 and 3 illustrate the changes in the spoilage bacteria populations
on the pork chops over the 60 day storage period. There was a
significant difference between the core and purge samples (p b 0.0047),
with the core samples having slightly higher populations than the purge
samples, by an average of log10 0.5 CFU/cm2
. Although statistically significant,
this suggests that the microbial populations in the purge samples
followed the same trend as the core samples, because the microbial populations
for each bacterial type are similar. The higher populations on the
core samples may be attributable to more available substrates, or simply
dilution of the microbes in the purge. As expected there was a significant
difference between microbial population type (p b 0.0001) and a signifi-
cant interaction between microbial population type and day (p b 0.0188).