Preservation of meat by heat and radiation – a review

Food preservation is the science and art of employing process which protect food from degradation by rodents, insects, microbes, enzymes or undesirable chemical alteration. A variety of processes can be used either alone or in combination including refrigeration, freezing, canning, drying and dehydration, salting, fermentation, radiation. Preservation technology has developed sufficiently to preserve the wide variety of foods for a considerable long time as near to the point of freshness as possible. Thermal processing and irradiation are two widely used techniques for preservation of meat and meat products in the present world. Thermal processing includes use of a suitable time temperature combination to obtain the desired preservation effect in the food. The process adopted may be pasteurization, commercial sterilization or sterilization. Most widely used method is canning or retorting which yields a commercially sterile product that can be stored safely at room temperature and is ready to be consumed. Irradiation technology uses ionizing radiations to preserve food. It has varying acceptability by the consumers. The radiations of interest for food industry include gamma rays, beta rays, X-rays and alpha particles as their quanta has sufficient energy to ionize particles in their path. The ionizing radiations produce ions and other chemically excited molecules that further react and produce free radicals and peroxides. The amount of dose for different applications is different. The doses can be low, medium or high depending on the desired effect.