Abstract:The Most Probable Number Methods (MPN) of Food Trade Standards were employed to enumerate the total bacteria count, MPN, faecal coliforms, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Staphylococcus aureus and Salmonella in the process simulation of Meretrix meretrix Linnaeus from the offing of Donghai Island (Zhanjiang, China). The results showed that the treatments of cleaning and scalding with hot water and freezing for 0.5 h showed a little effect on the total bacteria count of the raw material of M. meretrix which was (4.0±0.1)×105 cfu/g. It was also found that cleaning and scalding with hot water markedly reduced the MPN of the raw material of M. meretrix from (790.7±21.3) MPN/g to (19.4±1.3) MPN/g, and a further freezing treatment (0.5 h) decreased the value to (18.3±1.1) MPN/g. Faecal coliform of the raw material of M. meretrix was (817.5±19.8) MPN/g, which markedly fell to (194.2±10.2) MPN/g by cleaning and dipping into thermal water and to (180.6±11.3) MPN/g by further freezing for 0.5 h. V. parahaemolyticus in the raw material and the processed M. meretrix was less than 3 MPN/g. Besides, no coagulase-positive S. aureus and Salmonella were found in every products of the simulatively processed M. meretrix. M. meretrix in the offing of DonghaiZhanjiang was mainly contaminated by coliform strains and faecal coliforms which can be significantly eliminated by cleaning and dipping into thermal water then freezing for 0.5 hours.
