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21.02.2025 - Foods

Update of DGHM Recommendations: Microbiological Guidelines and Warning Values for Food

The German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology e.V. (DGHM) has updated its microbiological guidelines and warning values for food. These recommendations serve as guidelines for assessing the hygienic-microbiological quality of food. Unlike the legal requirements of Regulation (EC) No. 2073/2005 on microbiological criteria for foodstuffs, the DGHM recommendations are not legally binding.

The BAV Institute has incorporated the updates into its testing plans and particularly highlights the change in the preamble.

Updates in the DGHM Recommendations

Sausage, cooked sausage, cooked cured products as well as aspic products (No. 3.1)
The new recommendation remains unchanged regarding the parameters and values.

Raw sausages (No. 3.2)
The updated recommendation includes a revision of the criteria for coagulase-positive staphylococci. The guideline value has been reduced by one logarithmic scale:

• New: Guideline value 1x10² CFU/g, warning value 1x10³ CFU/g.

Other parameters included in the recommendation:

• Enterobacteriaceae
• Escherichia coli
• STEC
• Salmonella
• Listeria monocytogenes

Delicatessen salads (No. 8.1)
The recommendation remains unchanged regarding the parameters and values.

Availability of DGHM Recommendations

The complete DGHM recommendations are available for a fee at www.dghm-richt-warnwerte.de.
The drafts are freely accessible at www.dghm.org.

Current Revisions

The following recommendations are currently under review and may be revised in the future:

• Raw cured products at trade level (No. 3.3)
• Sea fish (No. 5.1)
• Raw mussels and raw mussel meat (No. 5.5)
• Raw or cooked crustaceans, chilled and frozen (No. 5.6)
• Cooked products (No. 6.1)
• Instant products (No. 6.2)

General Changes

In many recommendations, the wording "at trade level" has been replaced with "for sale to the consumer".

Since our Managing Director Paul Andrei is a member of the working group "Microbiological Guidelines and Warning Values for Foodstuffs of the DGHM e.V.", we are always up to date on these topics.

For further information or questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.