The ability to develop products with a longer shelf life has a positive impact on the manufacturer’s costs. However, this is a food safety challenge and an opportunity to combat food waste and promote sustainability. Every time a product goes bad, it will be thrown away along with the packaging, generating food waste and material loss.
In order to achieve safety and delicious products for a longer time, manufacturers must avoid any kind of contamination during the production and packaging process. Zero pollution is almost impossible; that’s why they rely on the use of antimicrobials to create protective barriers.
Vedeqsa provides a good solution in this sense. The following study shows how, thanks to the use of lauric arginate (LAE® or Ethyl lauroyl arginate HCl), sausages extend their shelf life by at least 2 weeks without affecting their organoleptic properties.
Sausages were analyzed for aerobic plate count and lactic bacteria count at time-0 (immediately after packaging) and after 2, 4 and 6 weeks of storage. Organoleptic evaluations were conducted by a panel of 6-10 participants, with a nine-point hedonic scale rating the exterior and interior of each sample for color, odor, and overall acceptability. In addition, attributes were examined over time to determine potential quality loss.
Microbiological results
Aerobic Plate Counts (APC) results showed that after 2 weeks of storage, control samples had a mean APC of 2.92 log10 CFU higher than those samples treated with LAE®. After 4 weeks of storage, these log10 CFU differences remained. Of course, at this point the control samples were already unacceptable. Results for lactic acid bacteria (LAB) were similar. After 2 weeks of storage, the mean LAB of the control samples was 2.85 log10 CFU higher than that of the LAE® samples. After 4 weeks of storage, the mean LAB of the control samples was 1.92 log10 CFU higher than that of the LAE samples. With these numbers, the control samples were unacceptable, while the LAE® treated samples were still acceptable.
Organoleptic results
Regarding the organoleptic results, it was shown that the inclusion of LAE® did not cause significant differences in mean attribute scores between control and LAE® treated sausages over time. After 6 weeks of storage, participants rated both control and LAE®-treated products as acceptable for all attributes.
This study proves that due to the inclusion of LAE® in the composition of meat sausages, its shelf life is extended by at least 2 weeks (or by at least 50%) compared to untreated sausages. Furthermore, the addition of LAE® in the recipe did not affect the organoleptic properties of the sausages.
Vedeqsa has a range of formulated products based on LAE® (Lauric Arginate), ideal for meat preservation and shelf life extension.
Want to learn more about how to extend the shelf life of meat and the LAE® range of products?