RECHARGEABLE ANTIMICROBIAL COATING FOR POULTRY AND MEAT PROCESSING FACILITIES

The overall goal of this project is to demonstrate the continuing antimicrobial efficacy of HaloFilm in real world food processing facilities with a focus on small or mid-sized poultry/meat processors, and to identify the gaps and potential improvements for large scale applications of HaloFilm in the food safety market. By the end of this project, HaloFilm will be commercially ready to sell to food processing facilities with scientifically proved performance data. We will have three major technical objectives for this phase III project and have laid out the following work plan to support each objective:Objective 1. Perform additional pilot pathogen inoculation studies to demonstrate the broad-spectrum antimicrobial function of HaloFilm against poultry/meat related pathogens.The meat and poultry industry has pathogens of special concern (e.g., Salmonella, Listeria) and each pathogen might have different resistance to different antimicrobial agents. Also, some pathogens from the field environment might be more resistant to antimicrobials than standard or laboratory adapted strains. Thus, it is important to test broader pathogens beyond a single Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) strain in phase I and S. aureus as we tested in phase II. Thus, we will include a cocktail of field-isolated strains for Salmonella and Lm for our phase III study to demonstrate the broad and non-specific killing capacity of HaloFilm on a food machine.Objective 2. Perform trial studies in small or mid-size poultry and meat processing facilities to determine the in-field performance of HaloFilm.There will be three phases for the trial study:Phase I: understand environment. Technical staff from Halomine will first work with the sanitation and QC teams from testing facilities to understand their current sanitation and QC regimens and determine the location and best time-point to apply HaloFilm in each facility that will fit into existing regimens. Our goal is to create minimum disruption or change of their existing systems, but these trials will require the use of chlorinated cleaners and/or disinfectants on a regular basis. If there are significant changes that need to be made to their sanitation protocols, that will need to be discussed with management to determine if these changes will be feasible or not. Three locations in each facility will be selected based on joint agreement.Phase II: training and preparation. Halomine staff will provide training to the sanitation and QC team members in each facility regarding applying and qualifying our product application results. Our goal is to have minimum disruption or add minimized burden to existing systems. Two training session of one hour each will be sufficient to ensure all personnel are properly trained. If there are additional man hours of their employees required to implement our products, the hour increase will be documented and be included into final cost analysis.Phase III: field trial design and testing. The sanitation team from each facility will apply our HaloFilm product on selected non-food contact surfaces of poultry processing facilities (once per week) and their QC staff will monitor chlorine level (daily) with a chlorine testing strip. UConn graduate students, under Dr. I. Upadhyaya's supervision, will come to the plant twice a week to collect environmental samples at the plant twice a week and process them at Dr. A. Upadhyay's lab to quantify total Aerobic Plate Count (APC), and test for the presence of Salmonella and Lm following standard sampling protocols recommended by FDA.Objective 3. Evaluate the usability, obstacles, and economics of adapting HaloFilm in small or mid-size poultry/meat processing facilities.While HaloFilm product performance has been well demonstrated, most experience has been gained under controlled laboratory or pilot conditions. In objective 3 we will implement human factors engineering methods to analyze and optimize user-product interactions which will inform product applicator design, training procedures, and user instructions. Specifically, Halomine will employ the six phase Design Thinking methodology15 to empathize with users, define problem areas, ideate solutions, prototype, test prototypes for usability, and iterate as needed. Our human factors team will include members from Halomine, our partner producer, and Diversey and will contain cross-functional representation from marketing, engineering, sanitation, operations, and maintenance. In addition to use-case studies, our team will also evaluate economic factors in the field. Surface coverage, application time, labor, and energy costs will be assessed and compared to Halomine pre-production targets.