The research of application facilities of dry ice technique in poultry industry

There are a variety of methods that can be used to clean and disinfect food processing surfaces and equipment. There are numerous disadvantages as well as advantages of each method. Especially chemical disinfectants are sometimes used in the wrong concentration or not used for a long time and may leave chemical residues on equipment that could destabilize the food. In order to eliminate these risks, dry ice technique which is among the mechanical decontamination methods has recently taken place in scientific studies.The aim of this study is to analyze the effectiveness of dry ice technique on microbial contamination in meat industry. In this study, a poultry meat plant was selected as an example for application and dry ice particles were moved to the operating environment by producing dry ice from liquid carbondioxyde in peletizers. In dry ice machine, pellets were sprayed to the surfaces in variable usage amounts depending on the contamination of surfaces. In the study, surface samples taken from the cutting knife, between two plucking robots, hook before chiller boiler entrance, cylinder after chiller boiler exit, bench after chiller boiler exit, hook after chiller boiler along the cutting and shredding line and packaging bench along the line of packing line by swab technique before and after the treatment of dry ice were used as material. Due to the harmful effects, dry ice weren?t used on the hands of personnel. Because of the fact that personal hygiene is an important factor, a special disinfectant process was conducted on the hands of personnel and samples were taken before and after the process. In addition, a total of 4 meat samples were used, including 50 grams of meat taken from five different regions of two different carcasses surfaces passing through the processing line and two different carcasses which were sprayed and immersed with dry ice. A total of 22 samples including swab samples taken from the surfaces before and after the process of dry ice and hands of the personnel before and after the process of disinfectant along with carcass samples were subjected to microbiological and physicochemical analyses. Furthermore, it is tried to determine the compliance of the process with the standards by sampling from waters, used in the plant which is considered to be likely to have an effect on microbial contamination.With dry ice technique, a reduction of 0,5 to 4 logarithmic units is determined in the total amount of aerobic mesophilic bacteria, yeast and molds, Esherichia coli/coliform through the swab samples taken from surfaces, knife and the hands of personnel. It is also observed that dry ice technique is effective on pathogenic microorganisms in some surfaces. It is tried to validate the results by using PCR method in parallel with the traditional pathogenic microorganism analyses. Similar results are obtained by PCR and the quantitative determination of pathogens is made as well. According to the results of analysis on the poultry meat samples, it is found that dry ice blasting is more effective than dry ice immersion.In conclusion, dry ice technique can be used safely as the industrial technique of the future and it is determined that dry ice technique will significantly reduce microbial contamination in meat industry. Because it is a new technique in Turkey, its application is limited. This limit is likely to be increased later on.Keywords : dry ice, microbial contamination, poultry, carbondioxyde, PCR