Use of a temperature function integration technique to asses the maintenance of control over an offal cooling process

Over 6 months period, temperature histories were routinely collected by staff at a beef packing plant from boxes of heart and livers passing through an offal cooling process. The time of logger placement, the position of the monitored box within a product stack and the position of the stack within the freezer were recorded for each temperature history was integrated with respect to a model describing the dependency on temperature of the anaerobic growth of Escherichia coli. The E. coli proliferation values were not significantly effected by the times of logger placement, the in-stack positions of monitored boxes or the freezer location of monitored stacks. The routinely, non-randomly collected in a previous assessment of the process. Simple control charts indicated the maintenance of control over the process. Temperature function integration data can apparently be applied in commercial circumstances for the control of meat cooling processes, as part a Hazard Analaysis: Critical Control Point (HACCP) System