National Beef Quality Audit 2016 face to face interviews and validation of HPP pathogen destruction for use in raw pet food
Date
2017
Authors
Hasty, Joshua D., author
Woerner, Dale, advisor
Belk, Keith, advisor
Martin, Jennifer, committee member
Morley, Paul, committee member
Delmore, Robert, committee member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Abstract
The two studies described in this dissertation (1) were The National Beef Quality Audit (NBQA) and (2) the Validation of HPP Pathogen Destruction for Use in Raw Pet Food. The NBQA is conducted every five years; the 2016 version face-to-face interviews gauged the status and progress of the live cattle production industry in improving overall quality and consistency of beef using the procedures of set forth in NBQA 2011.This was the first time that the audit of fed steers and heifers was combined with an audit of market cow and bull beef. Face-to-face interviews were designed to illicit definitions for beef quality, estimate willingness to pay (WTP) for quality attributes, establish relative importance (RI) rankings for important quality factors, and assess images, strengths, weaknesses, potential threats, (SWOT) and shifting trends in the beef industry since the 2011 audit. Individuals making purchasing decisions in five market sectors of the steer/heifer and cow/bull beef supply chain were interviewed, including packers (n = 36), retailers (including large and small supermarket companies and warehouse food sales companies; n = 35), food service operators (including quick-serve, full-service, and institutional establishments; n = 29), further processors (n = 64), and peripherally related government and trade organizations (GTO; n = 30). Face-to-face interviews were conducted across the U.S. between January and November of 2016 using a designed (by sequence) dynamic routing program designed on the Qualtrics software platform (Qualtrics 2016; Provo, UT, USA). Interviewers from three separate land-grant universities first correlated on the administration of interviews in November of 2015 to standardize data collection. Definitions (as described by interviewees) for the seven pre-determined quality factors, including: (1) How and where the cattle were raised, (2) Lean, fat, and bone, (3) Weight and size, (4) Visual characteristics, (5) Food safety, (6) Eating satisfaction, and (7) Cattle genetics were recorded verbatim and categorized into similar responses for analysis. It was critical to understand how interviewees perceived the meaning of each of the seven quality factor groupings to interpret WTP and RI responses. As in NBQA-2011, "food safety" was the most important (P < 0.05) quality factor in RI scaling. Additionally, each sector that did not list "food safety" as a non-negotiable must have characteristic, but was willing to pay a premium for the trait, said that they would pay an average of 11.1% premium for a guarantee of their definition of "food safety" (likely overinflated). The "eating satisfaction" quality factor, primarily defined as "customer satisfaction" by all sectors, was ranked second (P < 0.05) by all marketing sectors except packers, who ranked "lean, fat, and bone" second. Compared to NBQA-2011, generally, a higher percentage of companies were willing to pay a premium for guaranteed quality attributes, but overall were willing to pay lower average premiums than the companies interviewed in 2011. In the second part of this study, (2) non-pathogenic E. coli (ATCC BAA 1427-31), were used to validate the efficacy of High Pressure Processing (HPP) as a destruction tool for use in raw pet food. According to the American Pet Products Association (APPA), pet industry expenditures in the U.S. have grown more than 350% in the past 20 years. Monetarily, annual expenditures increased by approximately $2 billion dollars each year for the past 5 years. Furthermore, APPA estimates that 2016 U.S. pet industry expenditures will exceed $62 billion dollars. Raw pet food products are a rapidly growing sector of the pet food industry. While these formulations are increasingly attractive to pet owners, food safety has historically been a concern. This concern, met with FDA regulations of "zero tolerance" for Salmonella, demands that raw pet food producers explore technologies for the elimination of pathogens in raw pet food products. Thus, the objective of this second experiment was to evaluate the effects of HPP and frozen storage on the destruction of surrogate pathogens in a raw pet food. Approximately 18 kg of a raw beef pet food was inoculated to a target of 7 logs CFU/g with a 5 strain cocktail of non-pathogenic Escherichia coli (ATCC BAA 1427-31), which previously were validated as surrogates for STECs and Salmonella (Dickson, 2015). Inoculated product was packaged in 227 g individual roll-stock packages and shipped to a commercial HPP facility for HPP application. Inoculated samples were subjected to HPP at 87,000 psi for 480 seconds. After HPP processing, samples were transported on ice to Colorado State University for determination of remaining bacterial populations. Samples were assigned randomly to either a 24-hours post-processing (n = 10) or following 5-d of frozen storage at -23˚C (n = 10) evaluation times. Raw product samples were serially diluted in BPW and plated onto selective (Violet Red Bile Agar; VRBA; selective for coliforms) and non-selective (Tryptic Soy Agar; TSA) medias for enumeration. The TSA survivors totaled 5.36 and 4.6 log CFU/g 24 hours post-HPP and post-frozen storage, respectively. Data were analyzed using the mixed procedure of SAS (version 9.3; Cary, NC) and separated using the PDIFF statement with an α of 0.05. These data suggested that HPP is an effective tool for destruction of foodborne pathogens in raw pet food diets, but that HPP alone is not sufficient to reduce pathogenic loads beyond detection limits. Additionally, these data suggest that a frozen storage period following HPP may also be an effective method for enhancing pathogen destruction. Additional research related to the safety of raw pet food is needed.
Description
Rights Access
Subject
best-worst-scaling
Salmonella
raw pet food
WTP
HPP
beef quality