The prevalence of enterococci in
the final product only slightly correlated to its prevalence in zone
1 (0.50), and was weaker still between zones 2 and 3 (0.42), but
was highly correlated between zones 1 and 2 (0.96), highlighting
that the cleaning and sanitizing process might not have eliminated
enterococci sufficiently well enough in zones 1 and 2 allowing significant
cross contamination. Furthermore, these correlations suggest
that contamination in zone 2 could plausibly affect the
enterococci contamination in zone 1