The listeriosis outbreak experienced this summer due to the contamination of shredded meat from an Andalusian company highlighted a problem that causes more than 400 deaths each year in our country. The third in Europe in number of infected.
Recently the media has reported on other outbreaks in France, the United States, and in a German company whose products could have been distributed in Spain.
In this post we tell you about the practices and controls that we follow at Embutidos Luis Gil to guarantee the safety of our products.
What is listeria?
Listeria is a bacteria (listeria monocytogenes) present in wild and domestic animals, in water, soil... This bacteria causes listeriosis, a very violent food infection with a mortality rate of between 20 and 30%.
For a food to be considered infected by listeria, it must have a concentration above 100 colony-forming units (CFU) per gram. in ready-to-eat foods. The shredded meat infected in Andalusia had 15,000 CFU.
The best way to prevent the appearance of high levels of listeria in foods is take extreme hygiene measures during the production phase of the food chain, but also during its distribution and handling and storage at home.
What do we do at Embutidos Luis Gil to avoid listeria?
To avoid contamination by this dreaded bacteria, Embutidos Luis Gil takes different measures to guarantee the total safety of our products.
- Extreme hygiene measures
In our company we are very scrupulous and strict, always observing good disinfection and maintenance practices of our facilities, machinery and utensils used during the production phase. Mainly listeria contamination is a hygiene problem.
- Control of temperature and humidity conditions.
Although the bacteria is capable of surviving in extreme conditions of temperature and humidity, its optimal growth temperature is between 30 and 37º C. All our facilities are at much lower temperatures: 8º C maximum in the cutting and processing area, 12º C maximum in the slicing and packaging area and 7º C maximum in the drying area since we always cure all our sausages cold. Furthermore, in our sausages we constantly analyze the water activity (aw), always keeping it below 0.90 aw, since the bacteria need optimal conditions for their growth of 0.97 aw.
- Analysis of all batches with a certified laboratory.
Finally, all batches of our products, both fresh meat and sausages, are analyzed by an external Eurofins laboratory, certified by ENAC (Spanish Accreditation Entity), which is the world's leading testing laboratory in the food and beverage sector. animal feed.
