Evaluation of Ozonated Water as a Potential Intervention to Reduce Salmonella and Indicator Organisms on Raw Chicken Wing Sections

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effective-ness of ozonated water to reduce Salmonella and aerobic plate counts (APCs) on raw chicken wing sections. Sam-ples were inoculated with a cocktail of five poultry-borne Salmonella strains (mean 6.3 ± 0.3 log10 CFU/ml rinsate). The chicken wing sections (51.3 ± 12.4 g) were treated with ozonated water at three concentrations (2.5, 5.0, and 10.0 ppm) and three exposure times (15, 30, and 45 s) by either immersion or direct application (directly from a hose). Tap water was used as control, and the experi-ments were performed in triplicate with three wings per treatment. Salmonella reductions with ozonated water ranged from 0.3 ± 0.1 to 0.7 ± 0.1 log10 CFU/ml rinsate. APC reductions with ozonated water ranged from 0.3 ± 0.1 to 1.8 ± 0.7 log10 CFU/ml rinsate. Reductions were numerically higher, although not significantly, with ozonat-ed water than with tap water. Ozone concentration had a significant effect (P = 0.003) on Salmonella reductions in immersion treatment. Although Salmonella reductions on chicken wing sections were considered marginal, future work should focus on evaluating longer exposure times and ozone concentrations on the microbiological quality of raw chicken parts, possibly as part of a multihurdle antimicro-bial approach.