Investigating the Effects of Functional Ice (FICE) on Food Safety, Shelf-life and Quality of Poultry Thigh Meat During Refrigerated Storage

Abstract

Food Safety and microbiological spoilage are two major concerns during the extended periods of refrigerated storage and transportation. Antimicrobial interventions applied during the poultry processing may not have a prolonged antimicrobial activity and may fail to control pathogen and spoilage microorganism growth during the refrigerated storage and transportation. Hence, “Functional Ice” (FICE), a novel antimicrobial intervention, is developed to facilitate a “Sustained Release Mechanism” besides the cooling effect of regular ice, thereby improving the food safety and shelf-life of poultry meat. Research was conducted to investigate the effects of FICE, an innovation over the traditionally used regular water on food safety, yield, shelf-life and quality parameters of poultry thigh meat during refrigerated storage. FICE treatments were prepared by freezing aqueous solution of sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP) (2.5% and 5% w/v) and sodium lactate-sodium diacetate (SL-SD) (1% and 2.5% v/v). Ice made from tap water was utilized as a control treatment. In the first part of the study, the different FICE formulations were tested for their antimicrobial efficacy against Salmonella Typhimurium inoculated on thigh meat (n = 375) over a refrigerated storage of 48 h. Results indicated that FICE made of 5% STPP and 2.5% SL-SD lead to a reduction in Salmonella by more than 1 log as compared to the regular ice treatment (p ≤ 0.05) at the end of 48 h storage. Weight pick-up % (yield) was recorded for the uninoculated thigh samples stored in FICE for 48 h and data obtained indicated that FICE with 5% STPP and 2.5% SL-SD lead to an increased yield of 7-8% as compared to regular ice at the end of 48 h of storage. Another part of the study investigated the effects of 48 h FICE (5% STPP and 2.5% SL-SD) and regular ice storage on the subsequent shelf-life and quality attributes (color, texture and cook loss) of tray-packed poultry thigh meat for 8 days. Results indicated that FICE treatments significantly suppressed (p ≤ 0.05) the growth of spoilage microorganisms and extended the shelf-life of tray-packed poultry thigh meat by 1-2 days. Cook loss % of thighs stored in 5% STPP FICE was significantly lower (p ≤ 0.05) than other treatments without affecting the color of poultry meat. These results indicated that FICE has the potential to improve the food safety and shelf-life of poultry meat while maintaining the yields during refrigerated storage.