Chemical sanitizers continue to be widely used by the food industry to disinfect food contact surfaces. However, as some chemical disinfectants have been reported to produce unhealthy by-products, alternative and natural compounds need to be investigated. To this end, nine essential oils (EOs) were screened to develop a natural sanitizing solution (SAN) for disinfecting food contact surfaces. Once extracted, their antimicrobial activity and chemical composition were determined. An exploratory multivariate approach was used to investigate the relationships between the chemical and microbiological data sets. Among the tested EOs, Thymbra capitata EO, containing up to 93.31% oxygenated monoterpenes (mainly carvacrol), showed the strongest antimicrobial activity and thus was assayed as a potential SAN for food contact surfaces. To this end, a SAN consisting of 1% T. capitata EO was first validated according to the AOAC standard, which showed about 8 log reduction for Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica after 30 and 60 s of contact time, respectively. Then, the SAN was evaluated at various concentrations, cleanliness conditions, and contact times on stainless steel, glass, and polypropylene surfaces for sanitizing purposes. The results showed that the SAN containing 2.5% of T. capitata EO applied for 10 min, reduced the levels of E. coli by >3 log and S. enterica by 1 log under clean working conditions on the three tested surfaces. These findings indicate that EOs can be used as natural disinfectants to decontaminate food contact surfaces, thus lowering the risk of the indirect transfer of bacterial pathogens to food or persons.

化学消毒剂继续被食品工业广泛用于对食品接触表面进行消毒。但是，由于已报道某些化学消毒剂会产生不健康的副产品，因此需要研究替代化合物和天然化合物。为此，对九种精油（EOs）进行了筛选，以开发出天然消毒溶液（SAN），用于对食品接触表面进行消毒。提取后，即可确定其抗菌活性和化学成分。探索性多元方法用于研究化学和微生物数据集之间的关系。在经过测试的EO中，Thymbra capitataEO含有多达93.31％的氧化单萜（主要是香芹酚），显示出最强的抗菌活性，因此被测定为食品接触表面的潜在SAN。为此，SAN由1％T组成。首先根据AOAC标准验证了capitata EO，该标准显示，分别在30和60 s的接触时间后，大肠杆菌和肠炎沙门氏菌减少了约8 log 。然后，出于消毒目的，以各种浓度，清洁条件以及在不锈钢，玻璃和聚丙烯表面上的接触时间对SAN进行了评估。结果表明，含有2.5％的SAN Ť。卡塔塔施加EO 10分钟，降低了E的水平。大肠杆菌通过> 3个对数和小号。肠道由三种试验表面上清洁的工作条件下，1个对数。这些发现表明，EOs可以用作天然消毒剂，以净化食品接触表面，从而降低细菌病原体间接转移到食品或人身上的风险。