Performance Objectives for Salmonella in fresh pork meat intended to be eaten cooked: How to derive them and verify their achievement

• Representative data are needed to estimate POs for Salmonella in foods.
• Most of the contaminated lots by Salmonella after packaging remain contaminated up to the end of shelf-life.
• Refrigerated storage produced a decrease in Salmonella prevalence in fresh pork meat.
• The sampling performance is strongly influenced by the storage scenarios assessed.
• This approach offers different possibilities to risk managers improving decision-making processes.

In our study we aimed at deriving performance objectives (POs) for Salmonella in fresh pork meat intended to be eaten cooked, using loin chop as a model. Moreover, sampling plans to verify the compliance of meat lots to such POs are presented. Ten lots of product, collected in the same slaughterhouse along a one-year period, were tested for Salmonella detection under four different storage stages through the product shelf life. The POs were considered as different target values from Salmonella prevalence and were calculated at the 50th percentile of prevalence distributions under each stage. Results obtained indicated that values increased between a minimum of 26.10% of positives after final storage at 14 °C to a maximum of 46.70% of positives after storage at retail. The number of samples to be tested in order to detect at least one positive and verify the compliance to the estimated POs ranged between five, for samples after storage at retail, and ten, for samples stored at 14 °C before the expiration date. For risk management purposes, percentiles different from the 50th can be selected in order to derive the POs as well as the number of samples to be tested in order to verify their fulfillment. Thus, the approach presented in this paper offers different options to risk managers for improving the decision-making process.