Thermal inactivation kinetics of seven genera of vegetative bacterial pathogens common to the food chain are similar after adjusting for effects of water activity, sugar content and pH

A predictive model was made for the logarithm of the thermal decimal reduction time (logD) of Salmonella enterica (D = time to 90% reduction by inactivation). The model was fitted with multiple linear regression from 521 logD-values reported in literature for laboratory media and foods highly varying in water activity and pH. The single regression model with temperature as the only variable had a high residual standard error (RSE) of 0.883 logD and no predictive value (fraction of variance explained (R2) < 0.001). Adding water activity, sugar content and pH as predictors resulted in a model with a lower RSE of 0.458 logD and an adjusted R2 of 0.73. The model was validated by comparing 985 predicted with observed logD for S. enterica from other publications. The model was subsequently validated with 1498 published logD-values for inactivation of vegetative cells of nine other pathogenic bacteria genera (mainly Listeria monocytogenes, Escherichia coli, Clostridium perfringens, Cronobacter spp., Staphylococcus aureus, Yersinia enterocolitica) in or on a variety of laboratory media, meat, fish, dairy, nuts, fruits and vegetables. Regression analyses for validation with the 985 logD of S. enterica and 2483 logD of all genera show deviations from the expected slope of 1 (both 0.81) and the expected intercept of 0 (0.04 and 0.19 logD respectively). However, only 0.7% and 2% respectively of the new logD (expected: 0.5%) were observed above the 99% prediction interval of the original S. enterica model based on 521 logD. The findings suggest that i) the variability of thermal resistance of strains within species is larger than between genera and species; ii) one generic predictive model, also accounting for variability, suffices for designing the thermal inactivation of a variety of vegetative pathogenic bacteria in many food types.