Food Protection Trends - November/December 2020 - 401

could be pathogenic and may be cross-contaminated during
subsequent wiping steps. When the bucket was filled with
a QAC-based disinfectant at manufacturer-recommended
concentration, even in the presence of added soil, the
vegetative bacterial cell load in the solution was effectively
controlled to below assay enumeration limits, meaning that
the QAC effectively prevented microbial survival and crosscontamination in subsequent wiping steps. On the other hand,
bucket solutions containing QAC, both with and without
added soil, had little efficacy against the spores in this study
because a very high concentration of spores remained in those
solutions and could serve as a source of cross-contamination in
sequential wiping. As stated above, the MS2 data were mixed
and may not be indicative of the behavior of HNV.
CONCLUSIONS
The aim of this study was to characterize the degree of
cross-contamination of representative gram-positive and
-negative bacteria, spores, and viruses, to large surfaces, using
a traditional cloth and bucket method. We used a commercial
QAC disinfectant commonly used in restaurant settings (with
and without additional soil) and a PBS (no disinfectant) control. The intention was to perform the study on large surfaces
that are more representative of real-world retail food-sector
environments than most previous studies, which used very
small surface areas.

Although the effective inactivation of vegetative bacteria by
QAC disinfectants is well recognized (6, 12), the current study
shows that both L. innocua and E. coli were readily transferred
to laminate surfaces in the absence of a disinfectant. We also
demonstrated how easily B. cereus spores were transferred
across surfaces with the cloth and bucket method, even in the
presence of the QAC disinfectant with and without soil. Although the bacteriophage results were inconclusive and there
are other potentially important factors not explored in our
study (such as wiping pressure or the possible decreased activity of QACs when using cloth towels, which may aid the spread
of organisms to surfaces (4)), our study does suggest that use
of reusable cloths in cloth and bucket systems could potentially
promote cross-contamination and recontamination of laminate
surfaces. This has significance to food service establishments,
schools, and many other settings. Characterizing the efficacy
of other disinfectants and/or disposable wipe disinfection
systems in preventing the transfer of microorganisms between
surfaces, compared with the QAC cloth and bucket system
evaluated in this study, would be useful in developing best
practices in disinfection of large surfaces.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was possible thanks to funding from PDI,
Incorporated.

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https://www.doi.org/10.1520/E1053-11 https://www.doi.org/10.1520/E1053-11 https://doi.org/10.1520/E2967-15 https://doi.org/10.1520/E2967-15

Food Protection Trends - November/December 2020

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