There is increasing interest in meat products processed with less or no additives. This applies particularly to ‘organic’ meat products. The use of nitrite in the processing of organic meats has been discussed controversially for many years. It is a synthetic chemical with toxicological concern but because of its effect on appearance and flavour of meat products, marketing of nitrite-free sausa...

Hazard Analysis by Critical Control Points (HACCP) is a systematic approach to the identification, assessment, and control of hazards in the food chain. Effective HACCP requires the consideration of all chemical microbiological, and physical hazards. However, current procedures focus primarily on microbiological and physical hazards, while chemical aspects of HACCP have received relatively litt...

A computer-based tool (available at: www.wisc.edu/foodsafety/meatresearch) was developed for predicting pathogen growth in raw pork, beef, and poultry meat. The tool, THERM (temperature history evaluation for raw meats), predicts the growth of pathogens in pork and beef (Escherichia coli O157:H7, Salmonella serovars, and Staphylococcus aureus) and on poultry (Salmonella serovars and S. aureus) ...

Ground beef, pork, and chicken thigh meats were irradiated at 0 or 5.0kGy before and after cooking and then stored at -40°C in oxygen permeable bags. The pH, lipid oxidation, volatiles, and carbon monoxide production of the meat were determined at 0 and 6months of storage. The pH values of raw meats from different animal species were different (5.36-6.25) and were significantly increased by coo...

Structural change and color characteristics of chicken breasts as a function of irradiation dose and subsequent storage process were investigated by visible spectroscopy and HunterLab measurement. Ratios of R(1)=A(485 nm)/A(560 nm) and R(2)=A(635 nm)/A(560 nm,) which are related to absorbances of the visible bands at 485 nm (metmyoglobin), 560 nm (oxymyoglobin), and 635 nm (sulfmyoglobin), sugg...

Hepatitis A virus (HAV) and Norwalk-like virus (NLV) were detected by reverse transcription-PCR in clams imported into the United States from China. An epidemiological investigation showed that these clams were associated with five cases of Norwalk-like gastroenteritis in New York State in August 2000 (Food and Drug Administration Import Alert 16-50). They were labeled "cooked" but appeared raw...

Food falsification has direct impact on public health, religious faith, fair-trades and wildlife. For the first time, here we described a multiplex polymerase chain reaction assay for the accurate identification of five meat species forbidden in Islamic foods in a single assay platform. Five pairs of species-specific primers were designed targeting mitochondrial ND5, ATPase 6, and cytochrome b ...