The Institute of Food Hygiene at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Leipzig University, has collaborated with the Leipzig Chamber of Crafts, the German Butchers' Association, and a regional butcher's shop to develop a modular blended learning training concept for reducing fat and salt in sausage and meat products. In this project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Regional Identity, the results from a wide range of research and development projects conducted by the Institute of Food Hygiene were aggregated and are now being offered as training for the butchery trade.
This study investigates the influence of wood type on the pyrolysis behavior, sensory properties, and texture of Vienna sausages. Two hardwoods, beech and oak, and one softwood, alder, were used for smoke generation. Analyses of the ember bed temperature showed that alder exhibited higher temperatures due to its terpene content and lower density. Smoke color evaluation revealed minimal visual differences with AE2000 values below 3.0, suggesting that the changes were not easily perceptible to the human eye. Texture analysis revealed no significant influence of wood species on initial bite or casing tensile strength. Sensory evaluation revealed significant differences in sensory properties between samples, but no consistent preference for a particular wood species, with differences decreasing during the 28-day storage period. The results demonstrate the complexity of the smoking process and the need to consider multiple factors when optimizing it.
Although cleaning and disinfection measures form part of the daily hygiene routine in production facilities, inadequate implementation is often the starting point for microbial contamination of food. Repeated findings of Listeria in meat products and the production environment demonstrate that current routines are insufficient to effectively eliminate critical sources and niches of pathogens. Not only does the status quo of operational decontamination strategies need to be improved in terms of current hygiene weaknesses, it also faces growing challenges in terms of sustainability and environmental protection. Integrating alternative methods and technologies, such as ultrasound or UV-C irradiation, could be a potential solution. Combined applications have been proven to significantly improve cleaning and disinfection success. Furthermore, the physical principles of these technologies have the potential to reduce the long-term use of chemical agents.
The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of broiler transport length on safety and quality parameters of raw and smoked chicken breasts. The study was carried out on Ross 308 broiler chickens reared and transported under similar commercial conditions, while the only varying factor was the length of transport. Transport was categorized as short (20 km) and long (170 km) and from meat (m. pectoralis major) obtal-ned from such transported brollers, two experimental groups were for-med: short transport [ST] and long transport [LT] group, respectively. Each of these groups had a raw chicken breasts and further processed smoked chicken breasts variant. At the beginning of storage, raw chicken breasts from ST group showed higher pH value, water holding capacity (WHC) and shear force and lower TBARS and L value, but during storage. TBARS and L value Increased, and pH value and shear force decreased. On the contrary, in LT group WHC, L*, and a increased and TBARS, b*, and shear force decreased. At the beginning of the storage of smoked chicken breasts, only color (L*, a*, b*) significantly changed in both groups. At the end of the storage period, samples from ST group showed higher b* and lower pH value, whereas samples from LT group showed higher b* and shear force values. Higher bacterial counts were observed in all raw LT samples at the beginning of the storage period, except for MicrocOCCL During storage, bacterial counts increased in ST samples, but in LT sam-ples Microccoci increased, and total count of psychrophiles decreased. Bacterial counts in smoked chicken breasts were distinctly lower than in raw meat. Cross-section appearance, showed higher scores throughout the entire storage period in the smoked chicken breast from ST group in comparison to LT group, color and color stability, odor and taste, texture and juiciness had a higher score on 1(st )and 15(th) day of storage, and exter-nal appearance on the 30(th )day of storage.
