Quality changes of warm pork and chilled pork during storage

Abstract

The study was conducted to assess the quality changes of chilled pork produced by chilling technology and warm pork produced and consumed immediately after slaughtering. Chilled pork that was deboned and cut from the carcass underwent the chilling process immediately after slaughtering within 24 hours until the center part of meat reached the temperature of 0-4°C. After that the meat was stored at 0-4o C. Meanwhile, warm pork was deboned and cut from the carcass after slaughtering and sold immediately without being chilled. Meat samples were evaluated for microbiological and chemical criteria. The results showed that the chilled pork still met the Vietnamese standards after 13 days of storage while the warm pork no longer met the standards after 6 hours of slaughtering. The results also exhibited that there are clear benefits in terms of quality and food safety when applying the chilling process for pork meat, replacing manual production and immediate trading.