A new culture, Leuconostoc carnosum 4010, for biopreservation of vacuum-packed meats is described. The culture originated from bacteriocin-producing lactic acid bacteria (LAB) naturally present in vacuum-packed meat products. Approximately, 72,000 colonies were isolated from 48 different vacuum-packed meat products and examined for antibacterial activity. Bacteriocin-producing colonies were isolated from 46% of the packages examined. Leuc. carnosum was the predominant bacteriocin-producing strain and Leuc. carnosum 4010 was selected for further experiments because it showed strong antilisterial activity without producing any undesirable flavour components in meat products. For identification of the bacteriocins produced, partial purification was carried out by ammonium sulphate precipitation, dialysis, and cation exchange chromatography. SDS-PAGE analysis revealed two bands with inhibitory activity corresponding to molecular sizes of 4.6 and 5.3 kDa. N-terminal amino acid sequencing showed that Leuc. carnosum 4010 produced two bacteriocins highly similar or identical to leucocin A and leucocin C. Application experiments showed that the addition of 10(7) cfu/g Leuc. carnosum 4010 to a vacuum-packaged meat sausage immediately reduced the number of viable Listeria monocytogenes cells to a level below the detection limit and no increase of L. monocytogenes was observed during storage at 5 degrees C for 21 days. The results presented demonstrate that Leuc. carnosum 4010 is suitable as a new protective culture for cold-stored, cooked, sliced, and vacuum-packed meat products.