Survey of Listeria monocytogenes in Ready to Eat Foods
The National Food Processors Association (NFPA) conducted this study with the purpose of addressing uncertainties in risk assessment regarding the occurrence of L. Monocytogenes in ready to eat foods.
NFPA collected and tested about 31,700 samples in eight different categories of ready to eat foods. Samples were collected and tested over a period of 14-23 months from retail markets in Maryland and California Food Net sites. The product categories on the access database include fresh soft "Hispanic" style cheeses, bagged salads, blue veined and soft mold ripened cheeses, smoked seafood and seafood salad. The access database includes information on the product, such as location packaged, geographic area, date listed, date of purchase, date of assay, if vacuum packaged, etc. Test information also includes presumptive positives, number of tubes that are turbid at the 1, 10 and 100 dilution, most probable number, presumptive colonies, cfu/g, etc.
Download 
Zip file contains a database that is in Microsoft Access format. [4.7 MB]
See also a list of colum definitions for this Access database. 
Materials and Methods
Survey results were published in:
Gombas D.E., Chen Y., Clavero R.S., Scott V.N. Survey of Listeria
monocytogenes in Ready-to-Eat Foods, Journal of Food Protection:
Vol. 66, No. 4, pp.
559-569. April, 2003
View abstract online (Allen Press web site)
Date added to FoodRisk.org: March 2003
