Category Archives: Food Illness

The purpose of this study was to inactivate Escherichia coli O157:H7, SalmonellaTyphimurium, and Listeria monocytogenes by continuous-type pulsed ohmic heatingin buffered peptone water (BPW) and tomato juice. First, BPW inoculated with the three pathogens were treated at different flow rates (0.2–0.4 LPM) and treatment voltages (9.43–12.14 V_rms/cm). Both heating rate of BPW and reduction rates of pathogens increased corresponding to decreased flow rate. Accordingly, higher numbers of pathogens survived at a higher flow rate (0.4 LPM). Increasing treatment voltage was an effective way to inactivate pathogens at 0.4 LPM, but the heating rate overly accelerated with increasing voltage adversely affecting food quality. Alternatively, increasing initial temperature by preheating can help inactivate pathogens in the early treatment stage without affecting heating rate. From the BPW experiments, we identified that treatment conditions such as flow rate, voltage, and initial temperature are important factors determining pathogen inactivation performance of continuous-type ohmic heating. When applied to tomato juice, 5 log reductions of all three pathogens were achieved by applying 12.14V_rms/cm ohmic heating with 0.2 LPM flow rate after preheating sample to 50 °C with a water bath. Quality aspects of color and lycopene content were observed, and a^∗ and b^∗ values decreased after treatment. Because preheating with additional equipment is inconvenient and occupies valuable space, we developed sequential three cylinder type ohmic heating. By applying the developed sequential ohmic heating, 5 log reductions were achieved for all three pathogens without preheating under the same treatment conditions. Therefore, we concluded that sequential continuous-type ohmic heating can be used utizied effectively to control foodborne pathogensby the juice industry.