Fermented soya products tempe

Tempe (in literature also spelled as tempeh ) is a sliceable, cake-like product made of dehulled cooked soya beans, penetrated and fermented by a mixed microbiota dominated by filamentous fungi (Nout Kiers, 2005). Tempe is used as a side dish with rice as a staple. It can be prepared in many ways (Shurtleff Aoyagi, 2001b). 

However, the occurrence of contaminations by B. cereus in fermented products dominated by B. subtilis could be a matter of concern. The ability of B. cereus to form toxins was evaluated in kinema, which is normally dominated by B. subtilis. It was demonstrated thatB. cereus can produce hazardous levels of toxins when proliferating as a pure culture on soya beans. However, in the presence of a competing dominance of B. subtilis, such as in kinema, only insignificant amounts of toxin were formed (Nout, Bakshi, Sarkar, 1998). In tempe, protein-degradation fractions inhibited the germination of B. cereus endospores (Roubos-van den Hil, Dafinas, Nout, Abee, 2010). 

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