Seminar: "Ozone as an Antimicrobial Treatment of Fresh Meat: Opportunities and Challenges" - Josh Blaustein

Food Science  Seminar:

"Ozone as an Antimicrobial Treatment of Fresh Meat: Opportunities and Challenges"

Josh Blaustein
Master's Student
Rutgers University Department of Food Science 

 As a growing and increasingly affluent world population seeks to find nutritious food sources, worldwide production and consumption of meat, especially chicken, has been increasing steadily. But fresh meat is also contaminated with bacteria and has been implicated in a plurality of outbreaks in the United States. Meat processors are always on the lookout for cost-effective ways (such as irradiation, high pressure processing, and chemical washing) to reduce the bacterial load on the meat without adversely affecting the meat’s quality. Ozone is one such method that has been used intermittently for sanitizing food and water, but it has not gained widespread use. While ozone can react with macromolecules in bacterial cells, leading to cell death, it can also degrade the same macromolecules in the meat matrix, degrading the quality of the meat. The current literature review seeks to investigate the balance between ozone’s antimicrobial effect and its degradative effects on meat. Conclusions are drawn as to the efficacy and advisability of the delivery method (aqueous soak vs. gaseous diffusion), the ideal temperatures and time courses for the treatment and the types of meat for which this method would be most promising.
   
Advisor: Dr. Karen Schaich, Department of Food Science, Rutgers University