Nowadays, multinational food companies, as well as medium and small food producers, face up a real issue regarding the variety and complexity of processes to be validated before final adoption. Furthermore, they also face the diversity of the type and origin of food matrixes and the various raw materials to be used. Therefore, it is necessary to pay particular attention to the verification programs for foreign suppliers and the compliance with US food safety rules. The compliance requirements with FSMA rules have put in evidence the limits of the current process validation strategies and thereby the need to develop new specific and well-characterized surrogates. Surrogates dedicated to the validation of food process have been in use for many years, such as Enterococcus faecium NRRL B-2354 for the validation of the almond roasting steps. Nevertheless, if surrogates need to be applied to other process validation and other food types, it is important to better define the requirements. A good surrogate can be only defined after having completed a qualification program taking into account a number of variables: the process to be validated, the food matrix, the thermal resistance of the surrogate in comparison with a specific pathogen, stability and its capacity to be implanted in the matrix.

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