Abstract
The contact dehydration sheet (CDS) method is typically used to determine the salting and drying conditions for producing medium-dried low-salt seafood from several species of fish. Seafood samples dried by the CDS method were compared with those dried by conventional mechanical dehydration to examine the daily change in viable cell count during low-temperature storage (5°C). The viable cell count of seafood dried by the CDS method was significantly lower than that dried by either conventional mechanical dehydration or ash treatment that is also used for producing dried seafood. The reasons for this are likely to be the higher temperature (27°C) used for conventional mechanical dehydration, as well as the possible effects of secondary contamination by bacteria inside the drying oven and by airborne bacteria. CDS adhered to the fish during the production process, limiting the accessibility to airborne bacteria, while dehydration and drying at a lower temperature (5°C) delayed the growth of bacteria. Ash treatment is difficult to use and its dehydration efficiency is lower than that by the CDS method; it involves only gradual dehydration, and ash treatment is therefore presumed to be vulnerable to high contamination by various bacteria during the production process. The results indicate the CDS method to be superior to other typical methods for dried seafood production in terms of its microbiological control.
