Modeling and optimization of the E-beam treatment of chicken steaks and hamburgers, considering food safety, shelf-life, and sensory quality

Abstract

[EN] The present work was carried out to model the effect of E-beam treatment on the safety,shelf-life and sensory attributes of two poultry products, steaks and hamburgers, and tooptimize the radiation treatment. The inactivation of Salmonella spp. by means of differ-ent irradiation doses was modeled using a first order kinetics. The shelf-life was studiedby periodically counting the bacterial number in samples. For the modeling of experimen-tal data, only the exponential phase of growth was taken into account. The effect of theirradiation dose on the sensory attributes (appearance, odor and flavor) and instrumen-tal color (L*, a* and b* parameters) was modeled using the Gompertz function and theActivation Inactivation or linear models. The optimization of the irradiation dose was car-ried out by maximizing the sensory scores of samples and minimizing the instrumentalcolor changes. The safety and the shelf-life of samples were ensured by introducing con-straints into the optimization problem. In the case of hamburgers, the optimum calculateddose was 2.04 kGy, which guarantees the safety of the product and provides the best combi-nation of sensory and instrumental attributes. As regards the steaks, the optimum assesseddose was 1.11 kGy, significantly lower than for hamburgers