New Insights into the High-Pressure Processing of Meat and Meat Products

For years, high-pressure processing has been viewed as useful for pasteurizing food while maintaining the quality of fresh food. However, even at moderate pressure, this process is not without effects on food, especially on meat products. These effects are especially important because pressure greater than 400 MPa is generally necessary to achieve efficient microbial inactivation. In this review, recent advances in the understanding of the impacts of high pressure on the overall quality of raw and processed meat are discussed. Many factors, including meat product formulation and processing parameters, can influence the efficiency of high pressure in pasteurizing meat products. It appears that new strategies are applied either (i) to improve the microbial inactivation that results from high pressure while minimizing the adverse effects of high pressure on meat quality or (ii) to take advantage of changes in meat attributes under high pressure. Most of the time, multiple preservation factors or techniques are combined to produce safe, stable, and high-quality food products. Among the new applications of high-pressure techniques for meat and meat-derivative products are their use in combination with temperature manipulation to texturize and pasteurize new meat products simultaneously.