Meat is chilled immediately after slaughter. Most of the subsequent opera- tions in the cold chain are designed to maintain the temperature of the meat Cooking is a very common operation in the production of many meat products and operators appreciate the importance of rapidly cooling the cooked product. However, any handling such as cutting, mixing or tumbling will add heat to the meat and increase its temperature. A secondary cooling
In specifying refrigeration equipment the function of the equipment must be absolutely clear. Refrigeration equipment is always used to control tem- perature. Either the meat passing through the process is to be maintained it its initial temperature, for example as in a refrigerated store or a packing operation, or the temperature of the meat is to be reduced, for example in a blast freezer. These two functions
It is often stated by those in the meat and refrigeration industries that 'anyone can measure a temperature. Many millions of measurements are made of both meat and environmental temperatures in the meat industry. However, in many cases the measurements made are an unreliable guide to the effectiveness of the refrigeration process. Even when the correct tem- peratures have been obtained the data are often poorly analysed and rarely acted upon
Microbiology of refrigerated meat There are many pertinent texts on the microbiology of meats. The purpose of this chapter is to examine briefly the types of micro-organisms and con- ditions that are of interest in relation to the refrigeration of meat and meat products. In a perfect world, meat would be completely free of pathogenic(food poisoning