Aquatic products often carry contaminated foodborne pathogens on their surface. If acidic electrolyzed water is used to clean the raw materials of aquatic products, it can not only achieve the purpose of disinfecting the aquatic products, but also the cleaning solution after cleaning has no microbial residue, which will not cause secondary environmental pollution. At the same time, it will not cause cross contamination from cleaning solution or gloves to food raw materials, greatly reducing the risk of pathogenic microorganisms contaminating food raw materials. At present, there have been studies on the killing effect of acidic electrolyzed water on the surface of aquatic raw materials, such as Morganella, Listeria monocytogenes, Escherichia coli, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, etc.
Through the treatment of salmon contaminated with Escherichia coli and Listeria monocytogenes using acidic electrolyzed water, it was found that at 35 ℃, acidic electrolyzed water can effectively reduce the number of Escherichia coli O157: H7 and Listeria monocytogenes on the surface of salmon to 1.07 log10CFU/g and 1.12 log10CFU/g, respectively. Therefore, it is possible to consider using acidic electrolyzed water to disinfect raw aquatic products before consumption.
There are also studies showing that the combination of acidic electrolyzed water and ice made from it for sterilization treatment of food contact surfaces and certain aquatic product surfaces can effectively reduce histamine producing bacteria on their surfaces. The use of acidic electrolyzed water to treat pure cultured suspension of Vibrio parahaemolyticus showed that acidic electrolyzed water can reduce Vibrio parahaemolyticus by approximately 8.20 log10CFU/g within 2 minutes.
From this, it can be seen that the bactericidal effect of acidic electrolyzed water in treating actual aquatic products is lower than that of pure cultured bacterial suspension. This is because the organic matter on the surface of actual aquatic products weakens the bactericidal effect of acidic electrolyzed water. Therefore, in practical operation, the effective chlorine concentration of electrolyzed water should be appropriately increased according to the sterilization requirements or combined with other means such as using cold water to remove dirt first to improve the bactericidal effect of electrolyzed water.

Disinfection of equipment surfaces in contact with aquatic products

The use of acidic electrolyzed water for surface disinfection of equipment in contact with aquatic products can solve the problem of residual chlorine caused by chlorine disinfection. Moreover, the production of acidic electrolyzed water is convenient and can be continuously produced in large quantities, meeting the requirements of large-scale aquatic product processing enterprises for disinfectants. There have been many literature reports on the disinfection of the surface of aquatic product processing equipment or devices using acidic electrolyzed water. For example, neutral electrolyzed water is used for the treatment of cutting boards before food preparation. Compared with tap water and NaClO solution, neutral electrolyzed water can reduce the number of Escherichia coli K12 on the surface of cutting boards by 3.4 CFU/100cm2 and Listeria monocytogenes by 4.1 CFU/100cm2 during manual cleaning, which is equivalent to the treatment effect of NaClO solution and has better automatic cleaning effect.
Acidic electrolyzed water spray treatment on food contact surfaces can slow down microbial growth by 79% -100% to varying degrees. After studying the killing effect of electrolyzed water on Listeria monocytogenes on the processing surface of aquatic products, it was found that treating the surfaces of these three materials with electrolyzed water for 5 minutes can reduce the number of Listeria monocytogenes by 3.73 log, 4.24 log, and 5.12 log, respectively. The study also found that organic matter can reduce the bactericidal effect of electrolyzed water. Treating these three materials with crab meat residue on the surface with the same parameters of electrolyzed water can reduce the number of Listeria monocytogenes by about 2 logarithmic values and decrease the amount of bacterial reduction.