ABSTRACT
Food microbiology is a fascinating science because it is very closely related to practical applications in the food industry. The development of reliable techniques, which can be used to enumerate microorganisms and estimate their growth rates, is still considered to be the most fundamental research objective of experimental food microbiology. Many food products, including raw meat, poultry, and shellfish, contain certain amounts of intrinsic Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and fresh meat samples contain highly variable amounts of intrinsic ATP depending upon the cut and age of the meat. The use of bioluminescence to determine ATP is by no means a new technique. The ATP bioluminescence technique has the potential to be a solution as a platform test for the inspection of incoming raw milk to a dairy, control of milk in the milk storage silos, and environmental and process control in the processing plant. High levels of nonmicrobial ATP are particularly a problem in raw and fresh foods.
