Wood in Food - Measuring methods. Partial report 1

Summary

The aim of this project is to develop and evaluate measuring methods to control the hygienic status of wood in food industry. This is a part of the project “wood in the food industry” where the suitability of wood products used in the food industry is studied. The Nordic Wood programme funds the project with participants from Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The development and evaluation of measuring methods is a co-operation between the Icelandic Fisheries Laboratories and the Norwegian Institute of Fisheries and Aquaculture Ltd. We have tested five different measuring methods; contact method, soaking of sample in water, scraping, swabbing and liquid media poured on the surface. We used Halobacterium salinarum and Pseudomonas sp. as test organisms. None of the methods gives optimum results, but among the five methods, we recommend the contact and the swabbing as the most convenient and suitable measuring methods to be used in the industry. The contact method is easy to perform and convenient for a screening of the hygienic conditions of the wood. The swabbing method is easy to perform, quantitative, not destructive and applicable on all kinds of surfaces.