Microbiological quality of meat-based meals and operation of control systems within a food service environment

The catering industry is subjected to general European Union regulations concerning food hygiene, which has made the application of HACCP principles mandatory for almost all the activities in the food sector. The present report is aimed at evaluating the microbiological quality of meat-based meals and operation of control systems within a university restaurant. Unfortunately, the effort made over eleven years in terms of monitoring the temperature of the sliced boiled beef and implementing some preventive and corrective actions was not enough to bring under control the key Critical Control Points (CCP) of the cold storage in a university canteen. This was most likely due to the persistence of some structural deficiencies concerning human resources associated with possible cross-contamination phenomena. As a consequence of the inability to control these key CCP efficaciously, the (suggested) limit for the counts of the common contaminants (total mesophilic aerobes) was overcome in all the years except three, those for Staphylococcus aureus and coliforms were exceeded in two out of the eleven years of monitoring, and that for Bacillus cereus only in one year. No samples were found positive for the presence of Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella spp., or Escherichia coli.