Salmonella Behavior in Meat during Cool Storage: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Salmonella is an important pathogen associated with many foodborne disease outbreaks that can cause serious issues regarding public health, economic conditions, and quality of life, among others. Meat is the main human infection route for this bacterium, making food quality control in all production steps paramount. As Salmonella is a mesophilic bacterium, the cold chain is very important during meat processing, so pathogen behavior studies under cool storage, simulating the industry environment, can provide important data to the food industry. In this context, the aim of the present study was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of Salmonella behavior in meat during cool storage. Other conditions were also analyzed, such as meat sources (beef, chicken, pork, poultry, and turkey), fish, shellfish, media broth, package types, storage time, and bacterial inoculation (concentration and inoculation type). ABSTRACT: The aim of the present study was to investigate Salmonella behavior in meat stored in cool conditions (between 0 °C and 7.5 °C), by employing a systematic review and meta-analysis. The data were obtained from research articles published in SciELO, PubMed, the Web of Science, and Scopus databases. The results of the retrieved studies were obtained from meat (beef, chicken, pork, poultry, and turkey), fish, shellfish, and broth media samples The data were extracted as sample size (n), initial concentration (Xi), final concentration (Xf), standard deviation (SD), standard error (SE), and microbial behavior effects (reduction or growth). A meta-analysis was carried out using the metaphor package from R software. A total of 654 articles were initially retrieved. After applying the exclusion criteria, 83 articles were selected for the systematic review, and 61 of these were used for the meta-analysis. Most studies were conducted at 0 °C to 4.4 °C storage temperatures under normal atmosphere package conditions. Salmonella Typhimurium, S. Enteritidis, and a cocktail (strain mixture) were inoculated at 5.0 and 6.0 log CFU mL(−1). Articles both with and without the addition of antimicrobial compounds were found. Salmonella concentration decreases were observed in most studies, estimated for all study combinations as −0.8429 ± 0.0931 log CFU g(−1) (95% CI; −1.0254, −0.6604) (p < 0.001), varying for each subgroup analysis. According to this survey, Salmonella concentration decreases are frequent during cool storage, although concentration increases and no bacterial inactivation were observed in some studies.