he current society and consumers’ new purchase habits has impacted on industries such as the meat sector. This industry has been selling their products fresh, but the packaged products have been imposed.Since we are talking about a product which is very sensitive, in terms of conservation, and complicated at a microbiological term, it is not strange that this industry has the main responsibility for the main progress achieved in the package sector, and more concretely, in the new technical developments for food.
The complexity in conservation of this kind of products is that they are not thermally processed, so their microbiological content is very difficult to control. In addition, the big variety of microbiologic flora makes impossible to choose one conservation process which guarantee its entire control.
And if this was not enough, we also must take into account other aspects highly evaluated by the consumer at an organoleptic level, like the color of the red meat. Oxidation of the myoglobin is the responsible for the changes of the color changes in these foods. The vacuum packaging technique, which gets prolong the lifespan of this kind of products, in some occasions, it is not enough to maintain also its red color, which is high evaluated by the consumer, and sometimes it is associated with the product freshness.
So the meat industry has also opted for the package in modified atmosphere. Thanks to the incorporation in different combinations of food gases, an increase of the meat’s lifespan has been achieved (understanding lifespan as the time period in which it conserves good properties, both microbiological and organoleptic).
But even, with these two packaging techniques and with the refrigeration of the product, it is not enough in some cases. So it is necessary to resort to new methods which improve the lifespan’s times got by the traditional techniques. It is the active package.
High technology in active packages
An active package is the one which interacts with the packaged food or with its atmosphere to extend its lifespan, to improve its food security or its organoleptic properties, at the same time the food quality is maintained.
The advantages offered by the use of active packages unlike the traditional ones are:
• Response capacity of the package unlike the changes produced in it.
• Reduction of the use of additives and preservatives in the food.
• They maintain, or even improve the organoleptic quality of the packaged food and strengthen its lifespan.
• The possibility of reducing or eliminating other complementary treatments of conservation.
• Reduction of the distribution frequency of the packaged food, so they can be transported over long distances
• Reduction of the volume of refunds due the deterioration of the food.
There are different modalities of active packages, but applied to meat product, we can underline two: the oxygen scavenger ones and substances with antioxidant and antimicrobial capacity. In both, the interaction of the product with the package for improving the properties has been exploited.
In the case of the active packages with oxygen scavenger, it has been achieved that these substances absorb the residual oxygen which can be in the package after the food is introduced in it. It is a highly efficient method, both vacuum packaging (fresh and processed meat) and the modified atmosphere package, although this last one is not applied to red meat, whose modified atmosphere packaging has a high concentration of oxygen.
The most popular scavengers systems are the typical labels (figure 1), but the innovation has been incorporating these substances in the package, so that oxygen scavenger substances are totally imperceptible for the final product’s consumer.
