Hurdle Technology – or Is It? Multifactorial Food Preservation for the Twenty-First Century

Since 1976 the “hurdle” concept in food preservation has provided a framework for thinking about the factors that ensure the safety and stability of foods. Rather than “hurdle technology”, it is more accurate to think of multiple technologies applied to provide effective preservation. The hurdle concept has traditionally been illustrated by an arrow traversing a series of “boiled eggs” indicating that eventually microbial growth is stopped by enough hurdles. However, this model does not align well with everyday understanding of hurdles and can be distracting. This chapter considers benefits and drawbacks of the hurdle concept and other models for risk management before providing a new illustration, the “Legan and David Pole Vault Model,” that may be more intuitive. The model emphasizes “multifactorial preservation” to align better with modern approaches to modeling complex systems. It then examines the number and interaction of factors illustrated by several preservation models. Consideration of traditional and more recent products demonstrates that virtually all food and beverage products depend on multifactorial preservation to some extent. The chapter concludes with thoughts on the future development of multifactorial preservation and novel opportunities enabled by recent developments in the food and biological sciences.