As the responsibility for ensuring safe, ready-to-eat (RTE) meat is shifted away from regulatory agencies to the meat industry, a better understanding of the critical factors involved in thermal processing is needed.
This course has been designed to provide meat-industry participants with up-to-date information on the importance of thermal processing. The course program will cover these topics:
- Heat and Mass Transfer
- Microbiology and safety of Cooked Meats
- Control of Listeria monocytogenes in Ready-to-Eat Meat Products
- Validating Lethality Processes for Dry and Semi-Dry Meat Products
- Temperature Measurement
- Data Logging and Tracking
- Performance Standards for Lethality and Stabilization
- Equipment and Process Validation for Batch and Continuous Ovens
- Thermal Processing of Slurries with Indirect Heating Systems
- Fundamentals of Continuous Thermal Processing
- Mechanics of Chilling RTE Meat Products
- Introduction of Lethality Equations
- Use of the Pathogen Modeling Program and the Predictive Microbiological Information Portal
- Microwave Cooking of Bacon
- Food Safety Beyond Guidelines and Regulations
- Post-Packaging Pasteurization of Cooked Meat Products
- Sanitary Facility Design
- Processing Interventions to Prevent L. monocytogenes Growth
- FSIS Documentation Material for HACCP Decisions
The focus of this year's Thermal Processing Course is meeting the new Appendix A & B Guidelines.