Evaluation of the HApS™ Method for the Enumeration of Aerobic Microorganisms and Coliforms in Retailed Meat Samples in Korea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study was designed to compare the effectiveness and applicability of the HApS (Hazard Analysis process System; HUKO, Seoul, Korea) based on Petrifilm^(TM)(3M, St. Paul, MN, USA) with the AOAC (the Association of Official Analytical Chemists) standard total aerobic count (TAC) method and coliform count (CC) method for meat products. The comparisons were carried out using 230 meat samples collected from various retailers: 80 pork samples, 80 chicken samples, and 70 beef samples. In the comparison of the correlation coefficient (r) between conventional method and HApS^(TM) method by a linear regression analysis, the correlation coefficients in total microorganism were 0.97767, 0.90712, and 0.95594 in pork, beef, and chicken samples, respectively. The correlation coefficients in coliform count were 0.82062, 0.94833, and 0.96839 in pork, beef and chicken samples, respectively. All the independent t-test on measun:ment values between conventional method and HApS^(TM) method represented no significant differences in the means between two methods at the 0.05 of significance level(α=0.05). Based on the high correlation between HApS^(TM) and the AOAC standard methods in the TAC and CC, it might be compatible to employ the HApS method to measure the microbial contamination in livestock products. HApS^(TM) method was simpler and less time-consuming in sample preparation and procedures faster than the conventional method. These results suggested that the HApS method could be substitute for the conventional methods in the analysis of microbial contamination measurement in meat products.