Abstract:

Thermally sterilized meat products may still become spoiled due to the presence of residual microorganisms. In
the present study, a PCR-based technique was developed for tracing spoilage microorganisms in meat products. For this, a
set of specific primers was designed for Bacillus licheniormis as a representative strain of meat spoilage microorganisms,
isolated from spoiled corn hot dog sausage and identified with the Biolog microbial identification system. The PCR-based
method allowed accurate, sensitive and rapid detection of Bacillus licheniormis in spoiled samples with a 100% primer
specificity and a detection limit of 0.104 CFU/g.

Key words: specificity, sensitivity, Bacillus licheniormis