Effect of aqueous ozone on inactivation of bacteria isolated from the meat products and equipment

Ozone based disinfection is one of the approved green technologies for preservation of meat and meat products. The study had discussed about the isolation and characterization of meat borne bacteria using 16 S rRNA PCR and the effect of aqueous ozone on those microbes in-vitro. The important bacteria such as Staphylococcus sp., Bacillus sp., E.coli, Enterobacter sp., Proteus sp., Providencia sp., Pseudomonas sp., were isolated from meat, meat products and processing environment and were identified up to genus level using 16 S rRNA gene sequencing. Individual bacterial strains (10(8) cfu/ml) dissolved in a sterile diluent were subjected to aqueous ozone (O-3,O- 0.1 mg/kg) for 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8 and 15 min. Inactivation kinetics data was fitted into GInaFiT software. Ozone treatment for 15 min resulted in a reduction of 4.9, 5.1, 4.5 and 5.8 log(10) concentration of Proteus sp. and Providencia sp., Enterococcus spp., Citrobacter sp., and Staphylococcus sp., respectively. Biphasic shoulder, double Weibull and Weibull + tail models were good fit for inactivation data. Analysis of 4-D values indicated that Staphylococcus sp., was more susceptible to ozone (4-D = 7.5 min) and Citrobacter sp. was the least susceptible to ozone (4-D = 13.8 min).