ABSTRACT
Beef is a nutritious but highly perishable food that is readily spoiled by the action of microbes. Shelf-life is the length of time a food remains acceptable to the user and in the case of beef products is often the time between packaging and the product becoming unpalatable or unfit for human consumption. It includes appearance and odour as well as colour, texture, flavour and nutritive value (Singh and Singh, 2005). For beef, appearance and colour are particularly important and the shelf-life can be limited to the ‘displaylife’ or period the product retains the bright, cherry-red colour that consumers expect, although the more widespread use of vacuum packaging for retail cuts is changing consumer expectations. Despite the beef being perfectly safe for consumption, changes in myoglobin resulting in a browning of the meat may render the product undesirable and therefore ‘spoiled’ by customers (Brooks, 2007). From the microbiology perspective, beef is considered spoiled when the total viable count reaches 107−8 CFU/cm2 (Nychas et al., 2008).
