Modelling the growth rate of Listeria monocytogenes with a multiplicative type model including interactions between environmental factors.

A multiplicative secondary model previously published to describe independently the effects of environmental factors on the growth rate of Listeria monocytogenes (Augustin and Carlier, 2000) was improved by taking into account interactions between these environmental factors. The proposed model allowed to decrease the rate of fail-safe growth predicted from 13.5% to 12.1% and the rate of fail-dangerous no growth predicted from 16.1% to 7.1%.