Validation of manufacturing process to control pathogenic bacteria in typical dry fermented products.

Safety is the prime consideration and food manufacturers must ensure that products pose a minimum hazard to the consumer. The required safety must be achieved by preventing growth of pathogens during production and by reducing the remaining contamination to the lowest possible level. Dry and semi-dry fermented sausages are generally regarded as one of the most shelf-stable and safest meat products; they have rarely been implicated in food poisoning but sausage makers must ensure that their products do not harbour any pathogen bacteria. To ensure that processing is sufficient to eliminate any biological hazard present in the product, procedures must be validated to demonstrate that they are able to achieve a specified reduction in terms of pathogenic bacteria.