With increasing popularity of food delivery services, the microbial safety of transported meals should be ensured. An effect of the type of a meal (cooked rice; mashed potatoes; mushroom sauce), inner primary packaging (sugarcane bagasse [SB] tray; polypropylene [PP] tray), secondary container (polyester/polyethylene foam/aluminum foil [PPA] bag; PP box) on the time interval of the internal hot ready-to-eat (RTE) meal temperature decrease to the value critical for Bacillus cereus growth (40 °C) was tested during a simulated delivery; in aliquot samples of the same meals, B. cereus growth was quantified presuming a natural contamination of the meals. Type of a meal had no effect on the tested time interval (p > 0.05). Packaging a meal in the PP tray as compared to the SB tray and inserting primary trays into the PP box instead of PPA bag delayed (p < 0.05) the internal meal temperature decrease by 50 and 15 min, respectively. Average B. cereus counts in the naturally contaminated meals after the four-hour culturing at 40 °C was 2.99 log CFU·g-1. It was concluded that a hot RTE meal delivered up to four hours under the tested conditions is not likely to facilitate B. cereus growth above unacceptable levels.

Department of Animal Origin Food and Gastronomic Sciences Faculty of Veterinary Hygiene and Ecology University of Veterinary Sciences Brno Palackého tř 1946 1 61242 Brno Czech Republic

Department of Food Technology Faculty of AgriSciences Mendel University in Brno Zemědělská 1 61300 Brno Czech Republic

Department of Technology and Automobile Transport Faculty of AgriSciences Mendel University in Brno Zemědělská 1 61300 Brno Czech Republic

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