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The primary goal for this project is to develop a pressure based technology that will improve the quality of fresh, frozen or further processed muscle food products to fully achieve their value-added capabilities.
Specific objectives are: (1) Develop non-explosive, non-pyrotechnic pressure technologies that will improve the quality of fresh and frozen meat products using hydrodynamic pressure processing (HDP) technology as the benchmark pressure application, (2) develop pressure technologies that will improve the quality and shelf-life of further processed meat products and fully achieve the value-added capabilities of these technologies. Evaluate the effect of these technologies with companion preservation technologies being evaluated in the unit's food safety CRIS, (3) characterize the alterations in molecular and structural properties of meat products subjected to the technologies developed and described in objective 1.
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The effect of pressure on fresh and frozen/thawed muscle tissue will be characterized using biochemical, physical and chemical properties to determine their relationship with exposure to pressure in order to ascertain the correlation to successful meat quality enhancements (e.g., tenderness). The application of pressure processing to finished processed meat products either to raw ingredients before processing or directly to the finished product to determine where pressure processing would be most beneficial to enhance quality and shelf-life and fully achieve value-added benefits. Using hydrodynamic pressure processing as the benchmark pressure application, non-explosive, non-pyrotechnic pressure technologies will be developed and evaluated for successful quality improvements of fresh and frozen meat products.