Author ORCID Identifier:
Date of Graduation
12-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Food Science (MS)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
Food Science
Advisor/Mentor
Crandall, Philip
Committee Member
Wang, Dongyi
Second Committee Member
Robinson, Samantha
Keywords
Color; Contamination; Detection; Fluorescence; Sanitation; Spectrometry
Abstract
The poultry industry is expected to be growing at 3% in the total global market with the U.S. being the largest producer of poultry meat. Poultry processing plants are expected to produce 140 birds per minute with the potential of up to 175 birds per minute to meet the market demand. With the growing market and need for faster production, maintaining food safety needs to be a priority to ensure the safety of consumers. Over 9.9 million foodborne illness cases are reported each year in the United States. A change in food safety is needed, and one area lacking is the cleaning and sanitation monitoring system. Currently after cleaning a cleaning verification test will be completed. The current methods of cleaning verification are using quality technicians’ sight, touch, and smell, or using an ATP bioluminescence swab to detect contamination. Each of these methods have unreliable results, however, due to the processing conditions of being dark, cold, and wet along with the chemical cleaning agents and sanitizers causing interference with the instruments. A new cleaning verification is needed, and color and fluorescent spectrometry has the potential to meet this need. This research focuses on improving cleaning verification methods by using robotics, new swabbing training, and new technologies to detect contamination on food contact surfaces. New technologies such as fluorescence offer the ability to detect contamination that a human cannot detect themselves. The limit of detection was determined for detecting poultry contamination using both color and fluorescent spectrometry and compared to the current variations of human swabbing. The new technologies should be considered as a potential cleaning verification tool to in poultry processing facilities to help control foodborne illnesses related to the poultry industry.
Citation
Griscom, C. (2025). Using Color and Fluorescent Spectrometry as a new Rapid Cleaning Verification Method in Poultry Processing Plants. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/6076
