How keep the shelf life of meat products longer?

Being able to elaborate products with a longer shelf life positively influences the costs of the manufacturer. However, it is a challenge in terms of food safety and an opportunity to fight against food waste and foster sustainability. Every time a product gets spoilage, it will be thrown away, together with its package, generating food waste and material loss.
In order to achieve safety and tasty products for a longer time, manufacturers need to avoid any kind of contamination during the manufacturing and the packaging process. Zero contamination is almost impossible; this is why they rely on the use of antimicrobials to create protective barriers.
Vedeqsa provides a good solution in this sense. The following study shows how thanks to the use of Lauric arginate (LAE® or Ethyl lauroyl arginate HCl), sausages extend their shelf life by at least 2 weeks without penalizing its organoleptic properties.
The sausages were analysed for aerobic plate counts and lactic bacteria counts at time-0 (immediately after packaging) and after 2, 4 and 6 weeks stored. The organoleptic evaluations were conducted by a group of 6-10 panelists, with a nine point hedonic scale to evaluate the exterior and interior of each sample for  color, odor as well as the overall acceptability. In addition, the attributes were examined over time to determine a potential loss of quality.
Microbiological results
The Aerobic Plate Counts (APC) results showed that after 2 weeks of storage, control samples had a mean APC of 2.92 log10 CFU higher than those samples treated with LAE®. After 4 weeks of storage these log10 CFU differences remained. Of course, at this point control samples were already unacceptable. The results for lactic acid bacteria (LAB) were similar. After 2 weeks of storage, the mean LAB of control samples was 2.85 log10 CFU higher than that of LAE® samples. After 4 weeks of storage, the mean LAB of control samples was 1.92 log10 CFU higher than that of LAE samples. With these numbers, control samples were unacceptable while LAE® treated samples were still acceptable.
                                       
Organoleptic results
Regarding the Organoleptic results, it was proven that the incorporation of LAE®, caused no significant differences in average attribute ratings, between the control and LAE® treated sausages over time. After the 6 week time storage, panelists rated both control and LAE® treated products acceptable for all attributes.
This study proves that thanks to the incorporation of LAE® in the meat sausages formulation, its shelf life was extended by at least 2 weeks (or by at least 50%) compared with the non-treated sausages. Moreover, the LAE® addition into the recipe did not affect the organoleptic properties of the sausages..
Vedeqsa has a range of formulated products based on LAE® (Lauric Arginate) ideal for meat preservation and shelf life extension.
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