The food safety regulation and standard could cause issues in trading unless the regulation is grounded by scientific knowledge. In this research, we monitored the microbial population and analyzed the results to determine the actual level of microbial contamination in various foods using relatively new statistical analysis (Microbiological sampling plan, International Commission on Microbiological Specification for Foods). Our goal is building entirely new standards for various food categories addressed in the Korean “Food Code”. Indicator organisms (i.e. total aerobic count, E.coli and coliform) and food-borne pathogens (i.e. Bacillus cereus, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium perfringens) have been monitored in ten food categories and two functional health food categories.
As the result of the monitoring, total aerobic count of vegetable processing products, Sangsik and yeast product were found at the various range of ND(not detected)~8.20, ND~7.88 log10CFU/g, and ND~7.31 log10CFU/g, respectively. These food categories showed Bacillus cereus contamination with range of ND~3.20 log10CFU/g, ND~2.95 log10CFU/g and ND~3.00 log10CFU/g, respectively. Cereals showed low contamination level of microbial indicators with range of ND~2.48 log10CFU/g of aerobic count and ND of coliform. Some ready-to-eat products showed contamination of S. aureus, B. cereus and C. perfringens, however the concentration was not greater than current microbial criteria. In Ginsang and Korean red Ginsang,total aerobic count was ND~2.75 log10CFU/g, while coliform was not detected. There was no contamination of Vibrio parahaemolyticus for all food categories. With the monitoring, we proposed revised version of statistic standard for microbial contaminations.
The proposed standards here will be great addition in the "Food Code" after evaluation of social and economical impact as well as professional advisory committee discussion.