Alternative Additives for Organic and Natural Ready-to-Eat Meats to Control Spoilage and Maintain Shelf Life: Current Perspectives in the United States

Authors: BODIE, AARON - University Of Wisconsin; WYTHE, LINDSEY - University Of Wisconsin; DITTOE, DANA - University Of Wyoming; Rothrock, Michael; OBRYAN, CORLISS - University Of Arkansas; RICKE, STEVEN - University Of Wisconsin

Submitted to: Foods
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/30/2024
Publication Date: 2/1/2024
Citation: Bodie, A.R., Wythe, L.A., Dittoe, D.K., Rothrock Jr, M.J., Obryan, C.A., Ricke, S.C. 2024. Alternative Additives for Organic and Natural Ready-to-Eat Meats to Control Spoilage and Maintain Shelf Life: Current Perspectives in the United States. Foods. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods13030464.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/foods13030464

Interpretive Summary: Food additives are used in the commercial food industry to improve color, smell, and taste of foods, enhance nutritional value, increase processing efficiency, and extend shelf life. Consumers are beginning to prioritize food ingredients that they perceive support a healthy lifestyle, emphasizing ingredients they deem acceptable as “clean label” ingredients. Ready-to-eat (RTE) meat products can be contaminated with pathogens and spoilage microorganisms after the cooking step, contributing to food spoilage losses and increasing the risk to consumers for foodborne illnesses. The call for no artificial additives or preservatives has led to a search for clean-label solutions that do not lessen the safety or quality of RTE meats. Lactates and diacetates have been used almost universally to extend shelf life of RTE meats by reducing spoilage organisms, as well as preventing outgrowth of the foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. These antimicrobials applied to RTE meats tend to be broad spectrum in their activities thus affecting overall microbial ecology. It would be to the food processing industry’s advantage to be able to specifically target spoilage organisms as well as pathogens. While there have been studies of specific spoilage organisms, they are difficult to characterize with conventional microbial culture-based approaches due to the limitations and selectivity of most media used for cultivation and enumeration. A more comprehensive examination of the microbial ecology of RTE meats in their entirety is needed to properly assess impacts of externally applied antimicrobials. Developments in Next Generation Sequencing using the variable region of the 16S rRNA gene to generate molecular-based microbiome taxonomic identification of resident microbial populations on foods have emerged as a viable means to assess overall microbial ecology responses in food products. How these approaches would have utility for clean label RTE microbial ecology applications will be discussed in this review along with an overview of conventional microbial methods for RTE, and status of RTE clean labels.

Technical Abstract: Food additives are used in the commercial food industry to improve color, smell, and taste of foods, enhance nutritional value, increase processing efficiency, and extend shelf life. Consumers are beginning to prioritize food ingredients that they perceive support a healthy lifestyle, emphasizing ingredients they deem acceptable as “clean label” ingredients. Ready-to-eat (RTE) meat products can be contaminated with pathogens and spoilage microorganisms after the cooking step, contributing to food spoilage losses and increasing the risk to consumers for foodborne illnesses. The call for no artificial additives or preservatives has led to a search for clean-label solutions that do not lessen the safety or quality of RTE meats. Lactates and diacetates have been used almost universally to extend shelf life of RTE meats by reducing spoilage organisms, as well as preventing outgrowth of the foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. These antimicrobials applied to RTE meats tend to be broad spectrum in their activities thus affecting overall microbial ecology. It would be to the food processing industry’s advantage to be able to specifically target spoilage organisms as well as pathogens. While there have been studies of specific spoilage organisms, they are difficult to characterize with conventional microbial culture-based approaches due to the limitations and selectivity of most media used for cultivation and enumeration. A more comprehensive examination of the microbial ecology of RTE meats in their entirety is needed to properly assess impacts of externally applied antimicrobials. Developments in Next Generation Sequencing using the variable region of the 16S rRNA gene to generate molecular-based microbiome taxonomic identification of resident microbial populations on foods have emerged as a viable means to assess overall microbial ecology responses in food products. How these approaches would have utility for clean label RTE microbial ecology applications will be discussed in this review along with an overview of conventional microbial methods for RTE, and status of RTE clean labels.