[Assessment of bacterial counts in the meat-processing industry. III. The Stomacher method and the spiral plate method].

Two aids in the assessment of bacterial counts were evaluated. The Colworth-Stomacher technique is a reliable alternative to the relatively more expensive and more labour-intensive blendor method of homogenizing meat. In the suspensions obtained by the two methods, equally high bacterial counts were observed. The Spiral plate method provides equally high numbers of bacteria as does the pour-plate method, and reproducibility of the results is identical. In counting the total number of aerobic bacteria, the two methods show a very high correlation: r = 0.99.