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The presence of Listeria spp. in chicken drumsticks, wings, breasts, and livers taken from a poultry processing plant was investigated. The poultry pieces found to be most contaminated were drumstick meat and skin, with 96% of samples shown to contain Listeria spp. Drumsticks contained the highest number of Listeria spp., with counts in many cases exceeding 3 log CFU/g for skin and muscle. Samples were also taken from various surfaces in the processing plant, where the most contaminated areas were found to be in the final stages of meat processing. Three samples were positive for Listeria spp. immediately after washing and disinfection had taken place. The results suggest that drumsticks are responsible for a large amount of the contamination of chicken carcasses, and that the surfaces that come into contact with these pieces of meat play an important role in spreading Listeria spp. Disinfection procedures used by this processing plant do not effectively control Listeria spp.

Near-infrared reflectance (NIR) spectroscopy was used to analyze fat, protein, and total solids in cheese without any sample treatment. A set of 92 samples of cow's milk cheese was used for instrument calibration by principal components analysis and modified partial least-square regression. The following statistical values were obtained: standard error of calibration (SEC) = 0.388 and squared correlation coefficient (R2) = 0.99 for fat, SEC = 0.397 and R2 = 0.98 for protein, and SEC = 0.412 and R2 = 0.99 for total solids. To validate the calibration, an independent set of 25 cheese samples of the same type was used. Standard errors of validation were 0.47, 0.50, and 0.61 for fat, protein, and total solids, respectively, and R2 for the regression of measurements by reference methods versus measurements by NIR spectroscopy was 0.98 for the 3 components.

Silicon, phosphorus, sulphur, chlorine and ash contents were determined in samples of 24 Spanish commercial honeys. Mean contents (mg/kg of honey) were 3.2 for silicon, 78 for phosphorus, 45 for sulphur and 262 for chlorine. The values for phosphorus and chlorine are high with respect to honeys from other regions. Mean ash content was 0.19%. In all cases there were high coefficients of variation, ranging from 0.43 for silicon to 0.58 for phosphorus.