Study of the effect of post-packaging pasteurization and argon modified atmosphere packaging on the sensory quality and growth of endogenous microflora of a sliced cooked meat product

The objective of this work was to study the effect of post-packaging pasteurization on the sensory quality and growth of natural microorganisms during refrigerated storage (6?) of a cooked meat product considering two packaging atmospheres based on mixture of typical gases (CO2/N-2 (22/78%) and novel gases (CO2/Ar (17/83%)). Growth of lactic acid bacteria was significantly different between samples with and without post-packaging pasteurization, showing a growth rate >0.44 and equal to 0.28logcfu/day, respectively. For samples with post-packaging pasteurization, atmosphere CO2/Ar resulted in a lower growth of lactic acid bacteria and a better sensory quality. Overall, samples without post-packaging pasteurization did not show a significant reduction of sensory quality during storage time (121 days) while samples with post-packaging pasteurization showed deterioration in their sensory quality. Further investigation is needed to obtain more definitive conclusions about the effect of post-packaging pasteurization and argon-based packaging atmospheres on cooked meat products.