Feasibility Of Using Vascular Perfusion Chilling For Red Meat Carcasses

Meat carcasses must be chilled to below 7°C before leaving the slaughterhouse. Typically cold air is circulated over the surfaces of the carcasses, which can take many hours to reduce centre temperatures to below 7°C. In vascular perfusion chilling (VPC), a cold fluid is circulated through the intact vascular system, offering significant reductions in cooling time. This paper describes a small feasibility study to evaluate VPC for rapid chilling of lamb carcasses. VPC was found to be capable of rapid initial reduction of carcass temperatures, but uptake of perfusate into the carcasses limited the time for which perfusion treatment could be applied. Samples from carcasses treated with VPC were lighter and more yellow than samples from conventionally chilled carcasses, and had lower shear force values when cooked. This was most probably due to the added water in the meat. Microbial quality of the meat was not significantly affected.