Thermal Processing of Ready-to-Eat Meat Products
March 13-15, 2007
The Ohio State University
Surface pasteurization has become a very important process for destroying vegetative pathogens, which could make contact with exposed meat products between cooking and packaging. While there are pasteurization regulations for other food products, there are currently no regulations for surface pasteurization of cooked meat products. The process needs to be established for each product, based upon the desired level of destruction at the product surface. Factors which complicate this process are the shape, uniformity of the product surface, and the size of the products, as well as the package configuration. Equipment for both batch and continuous surface pasteurization are discussed.