Food Microbiology
The commercial sterility standard for low-acid canned food: a heat process delivering twelve decimal reductions of Clostridium botulinum spores.
This is why canned foods like tinned vegetables, meats and soups sit safely on a supermarket shelf for years without refrigeration.
The time at a given temperature required to destroy 90% of a microbial population — one log reduction.
The total lethality of a heat process expressed as equivalent minutes at a reference temperature. F0 is the reference at 121.1 °C with z = 10 °C.
The condition in which no microorganisms capable of growing under normal storage conditions remain, though highly heat-resistant spores may survive.
An anaerobic, spore-forming bacterium producing botulinum neurotoxin. Proteolytic types do not grow below pH 4.6, aw 0.94 or 10 °C.
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