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Conducting inferential statistics for low microbial counts in foods using the Poisson-gamma regression

dc.contributor.authorGonzales-Barron, Ursula
dc.contributor.authorCadavez, Vasco
dc.contributor.authorButler, Francis
dc.date.accessioned2018-02-19T10:00:00Z
dc.date.accessioned2018-03-08T15:14:45Z
dc.date.available2018-01-19T10:00:00Z
dc.date.available2018-03-08T15:14:45Z
dc.date.issued2014
dc.description.abstractMixed Poisson distributions have been shown to be able to represent low microbial counts more efficiently than the lognormal distribution because of its greater flexibility to model microbial clustering even when data consist of a large proportion of zero counts. The objective of this study was to develop an alternative modelling framework for low microbial counts based on heterogeneous Poisson regressions. As an illustration, Poisson-gamma regression models were used to assess the effect of chilling on the concentration of total coliforms from beef carcasses (n=600) sampled at eight large Irish abattoirs. Three Poisson-gamma and three zero-modified (hurdle and zero-inflated) models were appraised with a series of random-effects variants in order to extract any variability in microbial mean concentration, dispersion and/or proportion of zero counts. Models were compared and validated in their ability to predict the coliforms counts on carcasses after chilling. In all five test batches, the hurdle Poisson-gamma distributions predicted the observed post-chill counts closer than the Poisson-gamma distributions. This is justified by the better capacity of the hurdle model to represent a higher proportion of zero counts, which were in fact observed in the post-chill batches. Thus, with a coded variable (pre-chill/post-chill) as treatment, and extracting the significant variability of batches nested in abattoirs for the coliforms mean concentration (σ 2 u =2.68), the dispersion measure (σ 2 v =2.39) and the probability of zero counts (σ 2 w =0.89), the validated hurdle Poisson-gamma model confirmed that chilling has a decreasing effect on the viability of coliforms from beef carcasses, and that the concentration is reduced by an average (pre-chill to post-chill) factor of 2.2 (95% CI: 2.15-2.24) at batch level. The model also indicated that chilling increases the odds of producing a zero count from a carcass swab in about 13.5 times, and that the higher the coliforms concentration in a batch, the weaker the effect that chilling has to reduce such contamination on the beef carcasses.en_EN
dc.description.versioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersionen_EN
dc.identifier.citationGonzales-Barron, Ursula; Cadavez, Vasco; Butler, Francis (2014). Conducting inferential statistics for low microbial counts in foods using the Poisson-gamma regression. Food Control. ISSN 0956-7135. 37, p. 385-394en_EN
dc.identifier.doi10.1016/j.foodcont.2013.09.032en_EN
dc.identifier.issn0956-7135
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10198/16215
dc.language.isoeng
dc.peerreviewedyesen_EN
dc.subjectCarcassen_EN
dc.subjectChillingen_EN
dc.subjectColiformsen_EN
dc.subjectNegative binomialen_EN
dc.subjectPlate countsen_EN
dc.subjectZero-inflateden_EN
dc.titleConducting inferential statistics for low microbial counts in foods using the Poisson-gamma regressionen_EN
dc.typejournal article
dspace.entity.typePublication
person.familyNameGonzales-Barron
person.familyNameCadavez
person.givenNameUrsula
person.givenNameVasco
person.identifierR-000-HDG
person.identifier.ciencia-id0813-C319-B62A
person.identifier.ciencia-id441B-01AB-A12E
person.identifier.orcid0000-0002-8462-9775
person.identifier.orcid0000-0002-3077-7414
person.identifier.ridA-3958-2010
person.identifier.scopus-author-id9435483700
person.identifier.scopus-author-id9039121900
rcaap.rightsopenAccessen_EN
rcaap.typearticleen_EN
relation.isAuthorOfPublication17c6b98f-4fb5-41d3-839a-6f77ec70021a
relation.isAuthorOfPublication57b410e9-f6b7-42ff-ab3d-b526278715eb
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery17c6b98f-4fb5-41d3-839a-6f77ec70021a

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