Hi everyone! I am a new supervisor in a snow crab processing company. I am looking for a guide, a table or documents that tell me the microbiological criteria to meet for export to the US. Thanks for your advice
Hi Rachel,
Few comments/queries.
Some info on presentation would have been useful. I assume frozen and not vac.packed.
(1) Rachel - I was personally unable to locate any US data via links in Post 2. Were you ? If so what (or where) were the result(s) ?
(2) I speculate that the directly relevant data in Slab's useful attachment may mostly be those that referenced FDA's compliance programme x.842,/policy y.300 + Shank et al (also see below). (+ ??) . Unfortunately the current x.842 FDA document seems elusive as far as data is concerned. (older versions of document differ regarding some values and have some additional requirements).
My prediction is that definite items in Slab's attachment listed under "BIOLOGICAL" are - 2(older versions do have this in x.842 ), 3, 5(older versions differ quantitatively) and maybe 4(IMEX of frozen raw seafood [not crab] this was not tested afaik).
Sampling for Salmonella is presumably FDA's massive BAM scheme. L.monocytogenes no idea, maybe same since identical requirement ? ("Presence" is a remarkably unquantitative statement !!)
Might mention that certain States of USA, eg Texas, appear to have their own additional import micro requirements for crabmeat.