New packaging for extending Lamb shelf-life and cold chain management

Summary

The shelf-life achieved by the products in this trial exceeds the 90-day shelf-life expectation for Australian lamb, especially given the relatively warm storage temperature. Adoption of these new packing films could provide lamb meat producers with additional confidence to meet distant market requirements.

Objectives

The objective of this project is to perform shelf-life testing of new packaging (Films A and B) of important lamb products to verify that a shelf-life beyond 90 days is achievable. The new packaging will also allow product to be packed without the need for bone guard.

Key findings

Due to impending, planned shut-down of the plant, when tested, samples still had an acceptable shelf-life and it is probable that the acceptable shelf-life is longer than 115 days, particularly if average storage temperature is closer to -1°C.

Benefits to industry

The shelf-life achieved by the products in this trial exceed the 90-day shelf-life expectation for Australian lamb, especially given the relatively warm storage temperature. Adoption of these new packing films would provide lamb meat producers with additional confidence to meet distant market requirements

MLA action

Investigate if there is broad applicability of the packing film for all lamb primals.

Future research

There are several aspects that deserve additional research:

• Packaging Film A performed better than Film B and it would be useful to evaluate its effect of a larger range of key Lamb primals to ensure broad applicability of the packing film.

•Company A currently does not spray chill but is very interested in recommissioning it’s spray chilling equipment during the current plant maintenance shutdown. The effects of spray chilling on organoleptic shelf-life are not well understood.