Processing, Quality and Safety of Irradiated and High Pressure-Processed Meat and Seafood Products

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Animal meat and seafood have been staple foods for humans for thousands of years. They provide proteins, fats, and nutrients that are essential for good health. Nowadays, meat and seafood remain a major food group in human diet. Worldwide, the production of meat and seafood increases steadily due to the improved economic condition in many countries. The per capita meat consumption increases in almost every country. For example, the consumption of meat was more than doubled in China from 25.8 kg in 1990 to 52.4 kg in 2002 (FAO 2008). The consumption of fish has also increased steadily in the past four decades. The world per capita fish consumption increased from an average of 9.9 kg in the 1960s to 11.5 kg in the 1970s, 12.5 kg in the 1980s, 14.4 kg in the 1990s, and 16.4 kg in 2005 (FAO 2009). With the continuing economic development in many countries, the consumption of meat and seafood products is expected to increase dramatically in the future. In addition to raw meat and seafood, the producers have significantly increased the production of processed meat and seafood products. Traditional processing methods such as chilling, freezing, canning, drying, salting, curing, smoking, fermentation, and cooking have long been used for processing meat and seafood for their preservation. New processing techniques have been developed to process meat and seafood products to meet the demand for variety and high quality products. One of the most adopted approaches is to use less processing intensity to give the products a high organoleptic and microbiological qualities, i.e., minimal processing techniques not only maintains the shelf life and safety of the products but also give higher sensory quality and nutritional value. These new processing techniques mainly include irradiation, high pressure processing, pulsed electric field, and ultra violet and pulsed light radiations. The processing methods of the traditional techniques and their effects on microbiological and sensory qualities have been detailed in publications, such as ICMSF (2005) and Feiner (2006). This chapter summarizes the processing and effects of irradiation and high pressure processing, the two most researched and widely used minimally processing techniques, on the physical, chemical, sensory, and microbiological qualities of meat and seafood products.