Controlling Listeria in Crawfish Processing Plants

Project Introduction

Dr. Michael Moody of the LSU Department of Food Science and Cooperative Extension Service was involved as a Co-Investigator in a multi-agency research and extension project funded by the USDA-CSREES Food Safety Initiative Program. This project, entitled Control Strategies of Listeria monocytogenes in Food Processing Environments, was directed by Dr. Martin Weidmann and Ken Gall of Cornell University and involved additional research and extension scientists from Virgina Tech University (Dr. George Flick), University of Maryland (Tom Rippen), University of Delaware (Dr. Doris Hicks), National Fisheries Institute (Robert Collette) and the National Food Processor Association (Lisa Weddig).

The project goal in the first two years of the project was to investigate and develop improved control strategies in three ready-to-eat (RTE) seafood industries: smoked fish, crabmeat processing, and crawfish meat processing. The third year was devoted to reporting the scientific findings and developing outreach workshops to inform the seafood processing industries of the developed improved control strategies.

The LSU AgCenter Department of Food Science focused on the crawfish processing industry. After sampling product and processing surfaces for Listeria contamination in two Louisiana crawfish processing facilities, a training workshop was developed by Dr. Jon Bell, Seafood Technology Extension Professor. The results of the sampling study (performed by Jonathan Walker and analyzed by Dr. Weidmann’s laboratory at Cornell University) are discussed in the plant sampling results section of the workshop, and links to the research manuscripts will be made available as the papers are accepted and published by scientific journals.

Controlling Listeria in Crawfish Processing Plants Workshop
Presented February 27, 2003 in Breaux Bridge, LA

The Word file of the workshop agenda and PowerPoint slide files for each section of the workshop are available below. These include background information about the health risks of Listeria monocytogenes, crawfish plant sampling results and conclusions, control strategies, and employee training programs.