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Imprint
Tenacity of Alaria spp. mesocercariae in different meat products
Project
Project code: BfR-BIOS-08-1329-514
Contract period: 01.09.2013
- 31.08.2014
Purpose of research: Applied research
Since 2002 findings for Alaria alata are regularly reported in Germany in connection with the inspection of wild boar meat for Trichinella larvae.
The Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) has assessed the zoonotic importance of Alaria alata and the impact regarding consumer protection in 2007. The BfR recommended that positive wild boar carcasses shall not be intended for human consumption. Recently, a new method has been developed for the detection of parasite and first results for the prevalence in wild boar show, that an introduction of Alaria alata into the food chain cannot be excluded. In this context there are scarce data on inactivation of this parasite by processing such as salting, curing, drying and smoking with special to raw sausages which are consumed a few days after production.
Until now, different common/traditional meat processing technologies (e. g. salting/curing, fermentation, heat treatment and smoking) have been established under laboratory conditions in order to identify if the parasite can be inactivated during different process steps in traditional raw ham and raw sausage production. Until now, the results show that the mesocercariae survived up to 2 days. It must be taken into account in this context that especially “Knacker” sausages are mostly consumed immediately after production.
Furthermore, the resistance of the mesocercariae to different concentrations of common salt (NaCl), nitrite curing salt (NCS) and ethanol solution and the parasites survivability during gastro-intestinal passage (pepsin solution) was tested in vitro. To observe the effects of different concentrations of salt, NCS and ethanol solution on the survival of the mesocercariae, different concentrations of the substances, were used. We observed that the larvae resist up to 20 days at 2% salt concentration and until day 7 for ethanol. The effect of pepsin was attempted to analyze through the simulation of gastrointestinal digestion. According to our results, the larvae died after 240 minutes.
Section overview
Subjects
- Food microbiology
- Toxicology
