The Importance Of Food Spoilage

A Review of the Spoilage of non-beef raw meat and the measures needed to produce a superior quality product

Introduction

Food spoilage is the undesired change of a food, making it unsuitable for human consumption. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, approximately one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption gets lost or wasted, equating to just under one trillion US dollars (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2017). Considering that the food industry is one of the largest of the world, it is important to all parties to limit the amount of wasted food which is the reason for the increased influence of the importance of food safety and the prevention of food spoilage. The spoilage of a food does not mean the food is unsafe for ingestion or imply that it is inedible, but rather the standard has decreased and

Targeting components of the cell wall of both gram positive and negative bacteria, oxygen requirements, growth stages and optimum temperatures/pH etc. are all important cellular characteristic to be considered (Sung et al., 2013). There are various packaging technologies including Active Packaging and Controlled Release Packaging, the former is discussed briefly below.

Table 1: Numerous antimicrobials used in food packaging

Active Packaging is used for the modification of the internal environment of a packaged food by continuous interaction with the food. O2 and CO2 Scavengers absorb deleterious compounds for the surface of foods and have been commercialised in Japan and the US. They contain materials such as iron powder and ascorbic acid which decrease the O2/CO2 ¬content within the package to inhibit the desired microbes (Quintavalla and Vicini, 2002). Table 2: Active packaging with potential food applications (Suppakul et al.,