Reusing salad from salad bars – simulating the effects on product loss, microbial safety and product quality

The goal of this study is to model the effects of reusing salad from salad bars to reduce product loss, while keeping microbial safety and product quality at acceptable levels. We, therefore, expand our previously developed simulation model by incorporating reuse strategies and a quality decay model. The expanded model is used to simulate different salad reuse scenarios and to quantify the consequences to product loss, microbial safety and product quality. With this study, we show an application of a generic approach for the integrated modelling of product loss, microbial safety and product quality. The most cautious scenario consists of reusing salad for only 1 day after the first use and only if the salad originates from a package with a valid best-before date at the time of reuse (‘minimum reuse of salad with the best-before date criterion’). This scenario decreases product loss at the salad bar considerably from 37% to 29% ()21%). This considerable benefit occurs almost without causing product loss at the cold storage (increase from 0% to 1%), with only a minimal increase in the number of foetal mortality cases because of Listeria monocytogenes (increase from 11.9 to 12.2 cases per year (+3%)) and hardly any decline in product quality