Research Article UV-C Radiation as a Factor Reducing Microbiological Contamination of Fish Meal Krzysztof Skowron, 1 Justyna Bauza-Kaszewska, 2 Zbigniew DobrzaNski, 3 Zbigniew Paluszak, 2 and Karolina Jadwiga Skowron 2 1 Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Collegium Medicum of L. Rydygier, 9 M. Skłodowskiej-Curie Street, 85-094 Bydgoszcz, Poland 2 Department of Microbiology and Food Technology, Faculty of Agriculture and Biotechnology, University of Technology and Life Sciences, 6-8 Bernardy´ nska Street, 85-029 Bydgoszcz, Poland 3 Department of Environment Hygiene and Animal Welfare,he Faculty of Biology and Animal Science, Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences, 38C Chełmo´ nskiego Street, 51-630 Wrocław, Poland Correspondence should be addressed to Krzysztof Skowron; skowron238@wp.pl Received 30 August 2013; Accepted 28 October 2013; Published 21 January 2014 Academic Editors: P. Jones and A. Joshi Copyright © 2014 Krzysztof Skowron et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Fish meals, added to feeds as a source of protein, may contain pathogenic bacteria. herefore, efective methods for their sanitizing, such as UV-C radiation, are needed to minimize the epidemiological risk. he objective of this study was to evaluate the efect of UV-C radiation on the sanitary state of ish meals. he research materials included salmon and cod meals. Samples of the ish meals were inoculated with suspensions of Salmonella, E. coli, enterococci, and C. sporogenes spores and exposed to the following surface UV-C luencies: 0–400 J⋅m −2 for bacteria and 0–5000 J⋅m −2 for spores. For the vegetative forms, the highest theoretical lethal UV-C dose, ranging from 670.99 to 688.36 J⋅m −2 depending on the meal type, was determined for Salmonella. he lowest UV-C luency of 363.34–363.95 J⋅m −2 was needed for the inactivation of Enterococcus spp. Spores were considerably more resistant, and the UV-C doses necessary for inactivation were 159571.1 J⋅m −2 in salmon meal and 66836.9 J⋅m −2 in cod meal. he application of UV-C radiation for the sanitization of ish meals proved to be a relatively efective method for vegetative forms of bacteria but was practically inefective for spores. 1. Introduction Fish meal production is of great importance for the eicient management of organic matter. his industrial process makes some amounts of wastes of animal origin available for further sustainable use and also provides high-protein compounds to produce feeds for farm animals, mostly swine and poultry [1]. According to the regulation (EC) no. 1774/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council, a ish meal is processed animal protein obtained from marine animals, with the exception of marine mammals. he technology of processing this protein, also strictly determined by the current regulations, demands that the inal product is micro- biologically safe. However, some authors explicitly report meat bone and ish meals added to feeds as a source of a high incidence of human and animal diseases. his resulted from the presence of Salmonella in those meals [2–4]. herefore, attempts were made towards minimizing the degree of epi- demiological threat. However, further detection of bacterial contaminations resulted in the conclusion that a secondary contamination of this material had to be considered, which occurred probably during transport or processing. he literature data on the methods used to decontaminate ish meals are relatively rare. Malicki et al. [5, 6] investigated the efect of short-chain organic acids and pressurization on the inactivation of E. coli and Salmonella in ish meal samples. Both treatments resulted in satisfactory level of enteric pathogens reduction (4-5 log cfu⋅g −1 ) and the authors suggested their application for decreasing the microbiological risk related to contaminated ish meals. Hindawi Publishing Corporation e Scientific World Journal Volume 2014, Article ID 928094, 8 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/928094