Abstract
Retail beef steaks, inoculated with graded amounts of a Pseudomonas spp. and homologous phage, were subjected to a range of retail case temperatures to assess the significance of any interactive effects upon retail case life. The potential of phage to increase the case life of beef was unaffected by temperature within the range 1–10°C but was significantly influenced by the interactive effects of initial bacterial density and phage concentration. A maximum increase in the retail case life of beef, from 3.4 to 6.4 days, required initial bacterial densities of 4.6 × 103 CFU/cm2 and phage concentration of 9.7 × 107 PFU/ cm2.