Shelf life of reduced pork back-fat content sausages as affected by antimicrobial compounds and modified atmosphere packaging

Ready-to-cook fresh meal: study for shelf life prolongation

“…In order to determine the microbiological acceptability limit (MAL defined as the time at which the microbial loads reached the maximum value permitted), the re-parameterized version of the Gompertz equation was fitted to the total aerobic bacterial data (TAB), according to a similar approach also used in previous works dealing with shelf life of meat (Mastromatteo et al 2011;Del Nobile et al 2009). For TAB count the critical limit was set to 5x10 6 cfu/g referred to the 94/65 EC and 2073EC regulations (EC 1994EC 2005).…”

“…Such parameters may be successfully controlled by modified atmosphere packaging (MAP), being considered by meat industries a valid solution to keep the quality characteristics of meat and meat-derived products. Among microorganisms, MAP affects above-all aerobic Gramnegative bacteria (Gill and Tan 1980;Deak and Beuchat 1996) but generally, for meat-based products the best effects of MAP on spoilage were recorded when it was combined with active substances applied during process (Gammariello et al 2014;Irkin and Esmer 2010;Karabagias et al 2011;Mastromatteo et al 2011;Muhlisin Sun et al 2013).…”

Effect of Sodium Alginate Coating with Ascorbic Acid on Shelf Life of Raw Pork Meat

“…Samples (20 g) in duplicate from the coated and uncoated meat skewers were aseptically homogenized for 3 min with sterile peptone solution (Oxoid, Milan, Italy) (180 mL) in a Stomacher LAB Blender 400 (Pbi International, Milan, Italy To quantitatively determine the efficiency of the strategies proposed in terms of microbiological quality, the same equation was also fitted to the microbiological data and the Microbiological Acceptability Limit (MAL), defined as the time at which the viable cell concentration reached its threshold, was calculated (Del Nobile et al, 2009;Mastromatteo et al, 2011). The threshold was set to 7 log cfu/g for total aerobic bacteria (ICMSF (International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods) Microorganisms in Foods, 1986).…”

“…The shelf life value was calculated as the lowest value between SAL and MAL, thus representing the time at which one of the quality indices of the product reaches its threshold (Del Nobile et al, 2009;Mastromatteo et al, 2011).…”

“…Sensory and microbial quality was used to assess the product shelf life. Mastromatteo et al (2011) the SAL values are listed in Table 1. As expected, the overall quality scores of tested samples gradually decreased during time, regardless of the strategy adopted.…”