Produce Safety in Organic vs. Conventional Crops - Microbial Safety of Fresh Produce - page 86

Table 4.2. Summary of survival studies of foodborne pathogens in livestock manure
Manure and
Conditions

Bacteria Maximum

Survival (Days)

Other Findings Reference

Cattle manure S. Dublin

S. Senftenberg
S. Typhimurium

183
204
204

Inactivated in
composted manure
after 14 days

Forshell and
Ekesbo 1993

Manure in lab E. coli O157:H7 70 at 5 ° C Survival increases at

low temp. and
high moisture

Wang and others
1996

Piles and slurry
ovine manure

E. coli O157:H7 > 365 Little survival in

aereated piles

Kudva and
others 1998

Field manure E. coli O157:H7 99 Fastest inactivation

on soil

Bolton and
others 1999

Cattle manure and
slurries at 4 ° ,
22 ° , and 37 ° C

E. coli O157
S. Typhimurium

100 at 4 ° C 6 - log reduction after

38 and 48 days

Himathongkham
and Riemann
1999

Chicken manure
at 20 ° C

S. Typhimurium 100 and a w = 0.07 6 - log decline at

a w = 1 after 22
days

Himathongkham
and others
1999

Chicken manure
at 4 ° , 22 ° , and
37 ° C

E. coli O157
S. Typhimurium

261 Maximum

DRT = 150 days

Himathongkham
and others
2000

Cattle slurries at
RT

Campylobacter
Salmonella
E. coli O157

90 Inactivated after 30

days at 55 ° C

Nicholson and
others 2005

Dairy manure S. Newport 184 D - values from 14 to

32 days

You and others
2006

in manure, depending on the conditions, has been reported from 70 to 260 days.
In general, survival of bacterial pathogens in animal wastes appears to be affected by
temperature, moisture content, pH, and holding time (Warriner 2005).
Wang and colleagues (1996) reported longer survival of E. coli O157:H7 in bovine
manure at 5 °C compared to 30 °C. In another study, survival of E. coli O157:H7 and
Salmonella Typhimurium were recorded in cattle manure and cattle manure slurry at
different temperatures (Himathongkham and others 1999). In that study, the decimal
reduction times for both the pathogenic bacteria at 4 °C were seven to eight times
longer than that at 37 °C. Other reports have observed more than a year of survival of
E. coli O157:H7 in animal feces at temperatures below 5 °C, compared to temperatures
above 20 ° C (Kudva and others 1998 ).
Composting is considered an effective way of minimizing pathogenic counts in
animal wastes. Lung and others (2001) used laboratory cultures and bench-scale
composting to study effectiveness of the process in reducing E. coli O157:H7 and
Salmonella Enteritidis in cattle manure. In that study, composting at 45 °C for 3 days
decreased the pathogen counts to nondetectable levels (Lung and others 2001). Using
a similar approach in laboratory reactors, another study reported a 5-log reduction in
7 days in the viable count of E. coli O157 during manure composting as long as the
temperature was greater than 52 °C (Jiang and others 2003). In one of the few publica-
tions that have investigated the survival of E. coli O157 on compost heaps, Shepherd