Process for improving shelf life of refrigerated foods

Abstract

A process for producing a food product having an extended refrigerated shelf life comprising sealing food in a container; heating the food in the sealed container at a desired temperature for a desired period to inactivate undesirable microorganisms likely to be present in the food; and rapidly cooling the heated food to substantially prevent germination of undesirable microbial spores likely to be present in the food; wherein undesirable microorganisms present in the food are substantially inactivated and other microorganisms are prevented from re-contaminating the food after processing so that the food product has an extended refrigerated shelf life.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to food processing, which prolongs the shelf life of refrigerated processed food. Background technique [0002] Most of the health risks associated with under-processing spoilage of shelf-stable low-acid canned foods are related to the survival of proteolytic Clostridium botulinum spores. In contrast, for refrigerator-stable, minimally processed, low-acid foods, the focus is generally (but not exclusively) on the more heat-sensitive nonproteolytic spores of C. botulinum and S. cereus Survival and growth of Bacillus cereus spores. For shelf-stable canned foods, the purpose of heat processing is to reduce the survival probability of a single botulinum spore by a factor of 1 trillion (Hersom, A.C. and Hulland, E.D. (1980). Canned Foods.7 th Edition. Churchill Livingstone, London, pp. 118-181). i.e. a proteolytically hydrolyzed botulinum spore has a probability of 10 of surviving heat processing 12 one-third. This scheme...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

For example, although ACMSF (1992) and ECFF (1996) each differentiated between less than 10 days and greater than 10 days storage time, no upper limit for storage time was specified