Investigation of feasibility of bacterial decontamination of chicken carcasses by Ozone

  Abstract:   Ozone gas (O3) is a powerful oxidizing agent. Ozone has been widely used for disinfection of drinking water and wastewater. Microbial decontamination by Ozone is fast, simple, cheep and as a non-thermal technique could be used in food industries for decontamination of water, solid or liquid foods, equipment or other places. In this study ozone was used to destroy S. aureus, E. coli, L. monocytogenes, S. typhymorium and C. jejuni on agar plates and chicken skin. 10 or 100 µl of the bacterial suspension was separately placed on chicken skin or agar plates and the samples were treated with ozone (6.6 mg/min) in a chamber for 5, 10 and 15 minutes. Colonies count were made before and after treatment. After 15 minutes ozonation of plate samples, about 2.9-3.3 Log reduction for Gram positive bacteria and 3.6-3.8 Log reduction for Gram negative bacteria were measured. The effect of ozone on chicken skin was significantly reduced when about l Log reduction on bacteria population on chicken skin for all strains was observed. Campylobacter jejuni was the most sensitive bacterium to ozone. Although ozone may have some adverse effects on fatty products but the techniques is effective and a wide range of liquid and solid foodstuffs such as fruits, vegetables and other equipments could be disinfected by ozone in the food industries. For fatty foods a combination of ozone treatment with other technique(s) should be used in order to reduce the dose of ozone.