Similar results were observed in antimicrobial tests conducted in a liquid medium (Table 6). The inhibition was overall the most apparent for the film treatment containing LAE and EDTA. For L. monocytogenes, incorporation of EDTA with and without 0.5 g/100 g CO resulted in a significantly better inhibition than film treatments with chitosan and LAE only, while the film prepared with LAE, EDTA and 1 g/100 g CO had the growth of bacteria. For S. enterica, no growth of bacteria was observed for films prepared with LAE alone or with additional 0.25 g/100 g EDTA, while the addition of EO at a higher level in film reparation resulted in a significantly higher extent of bacteria growth. The insignificant impact of EDTA addition in films on the growth of S. enterica may have resulted from the higher resistance of the bacteria to EDTA ( Branen & Davidson, 2004). The reduced inhibition of bacteria by films prepared with a higher concentration of CO indicates that the binding by CO lowers the amount of LAE diffusing into the liquid medium to inhibit bacteria. Additionally, because the MIC of CO against the three pathogens in TSB is 750 μg/g (Ma et al., 2013), the residual amount of CO in films (no more than 48 mg/cm2, Table 3) may not be sufficiently high to impact the bactericidal activity of LAE at the studied conditions.