TY - JOUR AU - Raschle, Susanne AU - Zweifel, Claudio AU - Zurfluh, Katrin AU - Stephan, Roger PY - 2019/06/03 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Decontamination of knives used in a slaughterhouse by a commercial non-thermal UV-C treatment JF - Italian Journal of Food Safety JA - Ital J Food Safety VL - 8 IS - 2 SE - Original Articles DO - 10.4081/ijfs.2019.8107 UR - https://www.pagepressjournals.org/ijfs/article/view/8107 SP - AB - <p>To assess the antimicrobial effect of a commercial UV-C system, knives inoculated with <em>Escherichia coli</em> and <em>Staphylococcus aureus</em> as well as naturally contaminated and collected from the wet and clean area of a slaughterhouse knives were examined. For inoculated knives, UVC treatment for 30 s reduced mean<em> E. col</em>i counts by 5.1 log CFU cm-2 and mean <em>S. aureus</em> counts by 4.5 log CFU cm-2. The presence of blood lowered mean reductions to 3.4 log CFU cm-2 for<em> E. coli</em> and to 2.5 log CFU cm-2 for<em> S. aureus.</em> The presence of fat had a greater negative impact on the efficacy of the UV-C treatment resulting in mean reductions &lt;1.8 log CFU cm-2. For naturally contaminated knives from a slaughterhouse, total viable counts (TVC) before UV-C treatment varied considerably (wet area: 2.0-6.0 log CFU cm-2, clean area: 1.0–3.0 log CFU cm-2). UV-C treatment for 30s reduced mean TVC by 0.8 log CFU cm-2 (wet area) and 0.6 log CFU cm-2 (clean area), but the effect varied greatly between individual knives. Thus, under commercial conditions, the antibacterial effect of UV-C for the decontamination of knives is affected by the presence of additional contaminations like blood or fat. The adequate cleaning of the knives prior to UV-C decontamination is therefore of central importance.</p> ER -