ABSTRACT
Food-borne disease has always topped the list of food safety concerns for most governments around the world. Recent highly publicized outbreaks of Listeria, Salmonella, and Escherichia coli 0157:H7 have placed food-borne diseases at the top of consumers’ list of food safety concerns (Jones 2002). Therefore, the food industry is currently subjected to increasingly strict rules and controls at the request of the consumer. In particular, recent outbreaks of contaminations associated with meat products have heightened consumer concerns. Providing physical protection as well as moisture and oxygen barriers is a given. With today’s quality demands, that might not be enough! Growing concerns regarding the safety of intermediatemoisture foods warrant a greater emphasis on the development of active packaging, defined as “a type of packaging that changes the condition of the packaging to extend shelf-life or improve safety or sensory properties while maintaining the quality of the food” (EC Proposes Regulations 2003; Quintavalla and Vicini 2002). Principal active packaging systems include those that involve oxygen scavenging, moisture absorption and control, carbon dioxide and ethanol generation, and antimicrobial systems. As related by Strathmann, Pastoreli, and Simoneau (in press), the most common examples of active packaging materials are oxygen scavengers to prevent oxidation of food (removing the residual oxygen from the headspace and absorbing oxygen diffused through the packaging during storage) and moisture removers or desiccants for preventing spoilage by micro-organisms or a change in sensory properties. Furthermore, some materials change the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere in the packaging. However, only limited applications are actually identified in Europe. This phenomenon is related to the lack of a specific regulation for the use of these types of packaging. Preliminary investigations have been performed with a multipartner research project financed by the European Commission on Evaluating Safety, on effectiveness, economic and environmental impact, and consumer acceptance of active and intelligent packaging, but more data are needed. Although little developed in Europe, in the past decade, active packaging has become one of the major areas of research in food packaging. Of these active packaging systems, the antimicrobial version is of great importance. As reported by Oussalah, Caillet, Salmieri, Saucier, and Lacroix (2004), carved beef has a short shelf life that varies between three and five days when kept at +4°C. Pseudomonas, Enterobacteriacea, and lactic acid bacteria are responsible for meat deterioration. Meat and meat products may be also contaminated by L. monocytogenes, S. typhimurium, E. coli 0157:H7 and Yersinia enterolitica, responsible for food-borne illnesses and deaths. Thus, additional measures should be used to ensure the safety of such products. In addition to the development of pathogens, microbial growth commonly induces undesirable organoleptic changes during the storage of meat. If bacterial growth at the meat surface by a packaging film could be delayed or halted, large gains in product shelf life would be possible (Ouattara, Simard, Holley, Piette, and Begin 1997). Depending on the region, some of the traditional methods of preserving foods
from the effect of microbial growth (thermal processing, drying, freezing, irradiation, etc.) cannot be applied to some food products, such as fresh meats and ready-to-eat products. Moreover, as discussed by Skandamis and Nychas (2002), despite the extended shelf life of refrigerated products stored under vacuum pack or modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) conditions, there is an increasing concern about the growth and survival of microaerophilic psychotrophic pathogens.
