Improved use of oxygen scavengers to stabilize the colour of retail‐ready meat cuts stored in modified atmospheres

A series of three experiments were conducted to develop a retail packaging system suitable for use in centralized meat processing and packaging operations using modified atmosphere master packaging (MAP) of display-ready beef and pork cuts. It was shown that oxygen (O 2 ) scavengers were needed inside retail trays, lidded or over-wrapped trays could be used with equal success but inclusion of a grid inside the retail tray was not required. It was established that a minimum of eight O 2 scavengers with an O 2 absorption rate high enough to achieve an O 2 half-life of 0.6-0.7 h in the pack atmosphere were needed where the O 2 concentration could otherwise remain ≤500 ppm at any time during storage. Composite results from these experiments clearly showed that the best performance resulted from use of hard plastic retail trays containing eight O 2 scavengers, with high O 2 absorption rate, when placed underneath an absorbent pad and over-wrapped with an O 2 permeable film. Small holes in two corners of the O 2 permeable film to permit free exchange of atmospheres within the retail packages facilitated O 2 reduction during MAP storage.