[Naveena B. Maheswarappa, … Deepak S. Jagadeesh, in Reference Module in Food Science, 2016]
From fresh meat to cured meat, from pork to poultry, packaging serves as a vital link between the processor and the eventual consumer for the safe delivery of the product through the various stages of processing, storage, transport, distribution, and marketing. Plastics are mainly used in every form of packaging like trays, overwraps, shrink films, vacuum packaging, modified atmosphere packaging, and retort packaging.
Vacuum packaging involves removal of air from within the pack and maintaining an oxygen-deficient environment around the product by sealing the product in a flexible film of low oxygen permeability. This technique is used for improving the shelf life of primal and sub primal meat cuts, boneless meat, and also for processed meat products like sausages, patties, nuggets, etc. Significant improvement in shelf life of moist-cooked nuggets, dry-cooked patties, and deep-fat fried croquettes up to 40, 60, and 80 days, respectively, has been reported at refrigerated storage under vacuum packaging condition (Naveena et al., 2014). During vacuum packaging air is evacuated either by nozzle vacuuming or by chamber vacuuming from package and same atmosphere is maintained till heat sealing (Brody, 1989; Davies, 1995), while doing so pressure difference exists between the package exterior and interior causing collapse in packages.
