Abstracts - October, 2000
- Survey of Grocery Store Seafood Employees
- Pre-harvest Management Practices, Good Manufacturing Practices During Harvest, and Microbiological Quality of Lamb Carcasses

Survey of Grocery Store Seafood Employees
Tori L. Stivers* and Keith W. Gates

SUMMARY
We conducted a survey of grocery store seafood employees to design future training programs. Two hundred seventy-four employees representing 113 southeastern U.S. grocery stores (three companies) completed a questionnaire soliciting information on demographics, previous training, food sanitation and safety knowledge, seafood practices, spoilage and loss, and food safety and loss opinions. Respondents were predominately male, employed on a full-time basis, high school graduates, and between the ages of 18 and 44. On-the-job training was the major seafood training received. Mean percent correct answers were: 55 for food sanitation and safety, 47 for seafood practices, 64 for spoilage and loss, and 44 for food safety and loss opinions. Mean food sanitation and safety scores correlated positively with spoilage and loss scores, while food safety and loss opinion scores correlated positively with mean seafood practices scores. Food sanitation and safety knowledge was associated with hand washing and product temperature control. Seafood knowledge did not consistently translate into appropriate actions such as maintaining shellfish tags and avoiding the commingling of shucked shellfish meats. Seafood sales and percent seafood sales were significantly higher when reduced-quality fresh seafood was repackaged and frozen. Percent seafood sales were significantly lower when reduced- quality seafood was discarded or used for customer samples.


Pre-harvest Management Practices, Good Manufacturing Practices During Harvest, and Microbiological Quality of Lamb Carcasses
E. A. Duffy, S. B. LeValley, K. E. Belk,* J. N. Sofos, and G. C. Smith

SUMMARY
One hundred ninety-eight lambs were subjected to differing management strategies to evaluate the influence of these strategies on microbiological contamination of the resulting lamb carcasses. Additionally, during sample collection for this and other studies in six geographically dispersed United States lamb packing plants, areas of opportunity for improvement of good manufacturing practices were documented. Pre-harvest management strategies included: use (or not) of bedding, wet versus dry pens, and wool length (unshorn, shorn = 30 days before harvesting, shorn = 5 days before harvesting). Lambs were separated into 12 treatment groups/pens for 60 days before harvest during the summer season. Sponge samples were collected from external pelt surfaces of hot carcasses, hot carcass surfaces following pelt-removal, and chilled carcass surfaces following 24 h of chilling, and were analyzed for Aerobic Plate Counts (APC), Total Coliform Counts (TCC), Escherichia coli Counts (ECC), and the presence of Salmonella spp. Additionally, lamb fecal samples were obtained and analyzed for the presence of Salmonella spp. None of the fecal samples tested positive for Salmonella spp., and only two sponge samples (0.37%) tested positive for Salmonella spp. Under conditions of this study, pre-harvest management practices appeared to have no major influence on APC, TCC, and ECC on lamb carcasses.