The industrial packaging of meat products is an important process factor to preserve high quality and prolong shelf life by reducing microbial growth, lipid oxidation, and enzymatic autolysis. ...Currently, legislation and regulations are forcing companies to eliminate or reduce the use of (conventional fossil-based plastic) packaging.
This case study in the German meat industry was designed to ascertain the effectiveness of four innovative packaging materials, differing in foil thickness and composition, to preserve the quality of ma-packed emulsion-type sausages during its shelf life compared to a conventional control packaging (multi-layer APET/PE 300µ/62µ). During storage, different product parameters and the atmosphere inside the packages were investigated to analyze the effect on product quality and shelf life.
Except for one plastic-reduced multi-layer APET/PE 250µ/47µ, all materials showed significantly higher values for defect packages and gas permeability compared to the control. The decline in product quality varied between the materials showing no correlation between microbial spoilage and a decrease in product quality for emulsion-type sausages in the tested materials in comparison to the control. Besides the control, the multi-layer APET/PE 230µ/62µ was most effective in keeping the quality of ma-packed emulsion-type sausages and preserved an acceptable product quality during its shelf life.
This study is aimed to fabricate and characterize the seaweed- biodegradable films incorporated with varying concentrations of microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) which was extracted from two bamboo ...sources:
Schizostachyum brachycladum
(BLMCC) and
Gigantochloa scortechinii
(BSMCC). Pure biodegradable seaweed film was directly fabricated from red seaweed (
Kappaphycus alvarezii
). In this demonstrated work, commercial MCC (CMCC), BLMCC and BSMCC were used to reinforce the pure seaweed bio-degradable film at different loading concentrations (0, 1, 3, 5, 7, 10 and 15%) based on the dried-weight of seaweed, for packaging applications. There was substantial improvement in the tensile strength and contact angle values while reduction in the water vapor permeability and elongation at break values with the incorporation of the CMCC, BLMCC and BSMCC into the seaweed pure film matrix, which is highly desirable for the packaging material in the current scenario. The morphology of the fabricated films confirmed that there was good dispersion of the 7% of CMCC, 5% of BLMCC and 3% of BSMCC in the pure seaweed films, which resulted in the enhanced mechanical properties. So far, this is the first report on the microcrystalline cellulose based seaweed films with excellent mechanical properties, which makes them suitable for packaging application. The demonstrated work proved that both BSMCC and BLMCC based seaweed composite films have the huge potential to be used as biodegradable packaging material for wide range of applications.
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