A currently investigated decontamination process for intact shell eggs involves mild water bath heat treatment followed by ozonation. We investigated the effect of a Moderate Electric Field (MEF) applied during water bath pretreatment on the survival of Escherichia coli K12 (a common Salmonella surrogate for heat processing), inoculated in the albumen. Results showed the addition of an electric field significantly improved (p < 0.05) the decontamination process lowering population by an extra 0.94 log CFU/g compared to the conventional heating process when plated on Sorbitol MacConkey Agar (SMAC), despite the temperatures during the MEF process being slightly lower than the conventional process. Follow-up studies suggest that small currents do flow through the eggs during MEF treatment, explaining the additional lethal effect. Our results suggest that temperatures for egg treatment could be reduced during a MEF inactivation process, resulting in potential quality improvement.

目前研究的完整壳蛋去污工艺包括温和的水浴热处理，然后进行臭氧处理。我们研究了水浴预处理期间施加的中等电场（MEF）对大肠杆菌K12（常见沙门氏菌）存活的影响替代品，用于热处理），接种在蛋白中。结果表明，尽管在MEF期间温度较高，但与传统加热工艺相比，在传统的加热工艺中，在山梨糖醇MacConkey琼脂（SMAC）上电镀时，电场的添加显着改善了（p <0.05）去污工艺，从而使种群降低了0.94 log CFU / g。该过程略低于常规过程。后续研究表明，MEF治疗期间确实有小电流流过卵，这说明了额外的致死作用。我们的结果表明，在MEF灭活过程中，可以降低鸡蛋处理的温度，从而可能改善质量。