Belk Aeriel D, Duarte Toni, Quinn Casey, Coil David A, Belk Keith E, Eisen Jonathan A, Quinn Jason C, Martin Jennifer N, Yang Xiang, Metcalf Jessica L
Department of Animal Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
Department of Animal Science, University of California, Davis, California, USA.
mSystems. 2021 Mar 2;6(2):e00912-20. doi: 10.1128/mSystems.00912-20.
The United States' large-scale poultry meat industry is energy and water intensive, and opportunities may exist to improve sustainability during the broiler chilling process. By USDA regulation, after harvest the internal temperature of the chicken must be reduced to 40°F or less within 16 h to inhibit bacterial growth that would otherwise compromise the safety of the product. This step is accomplished most commonly by water immersion chilling in the United States, while air chilling methods dominate other global markets. A comprehensive understanding of the differences between these chilling methods is lacking. Therefore, we assessed the meat quality, shelf-life, microbial ecology, and techno-economic impacts of chilling methods on chicken broilers in a university meat laboratory setting. We discovered that air chilling methods resulted in superior chicken odor and shelf-life, especially prior to 14 days of dark storage. Moreover, we demonstrated that air chilling resulted in a more diverse microbiome that we hypothesize may delay the dominance of the spoilage organism Finally, a techno-economic analysis highlighted potential economic advantages to air chilling compared to water chilling in facility locations where water costs are a more significant factor than energy costs. As the poultry industry works to become more sustainable and to reduce the volume of food waste, it is critical to consider points in the processing system that can be altered to make the process more efficient. In this study, we demonstrate that the method used during chilling (air versus water chilling) influences the final product microbial community, quality, and physiochemistry. Notably, the use of air chilling appears to delay the bloom of spp. that are the primary spoilers in packaged meat products. By using air chilling to reduce carcass temperatures instead of water chilling, producers may extend the time until spoilage of the products and, depending on the cost of water in the area, may have economic and sustainability advantages. As a next step, a similar experiment should be done in an industrial setting to confirm these results generated in a small-scale university lab facility.
美国大规模的禽肉产业能源和水资源消耗大，在肉鸡冷却过程中可能存在提高可持续性的机会。根据美国农业部的规定，收获后鸡肉的内部温度必须在16小时内降至40°F或更低，以抑制细菌生长，否则会影响产品安全。在美国，这一步骤最常见的是通过水浸冷却来完成，而风冷方法在其他全球市场占主导地位。目前缺乏对这些冷却方法之间差异的全面了解。因此，我们在大学肉类实验室环境中评估了冷却方法对肉鸡的肉质、保质期、微生物生态学和技术经济影响。我们发现风冷方法能使鸡肉气味和保质期更佳，尤其是在黑暗储存14天之前。此外，我们证明风冷导致微生物群落更加多样化，我们推测这可能会延迟腐败菌的主导地位。最后，一项技术经济分析强调，在水成本比能源成本更重要的设施地点，与水冷相比，风冷具有潜在的经济优势。随着家禽行业努力提高可持续性并减少食物浪费量，考虑加工系统中可以改变以提高效率的环节至关重要。在本研究中，我们证明冷却过程中使用的方法（风冷与水冷）会影响最终产品的微生物群落、质量和物理化学性质。值得注意的是，使用风冷似乎会延迟包装肉类产品中主要腐败菌的繁殖。通过使用风冷而不是水冷来降低胴体温度生产商可能会延长产品变质前的时间，并且根据该地区的水成本，可能具有经济和可持续性优势。下一步，应该在工业环境中进行类似的实验，以确认在小型大学实验室设施中产生的这些结果。
