Shelf-life of Pasteurised Chilled Foods

Over the past 20 years or so, the chilled foods industry has been using two target pasteurisation processes for products such as chilled soups, sauces, ready meals and cooked meats to assure safety. These processes split chilled foods broadly into 2 categories: short shelf-life products and long shelf-life products (>10 days). These processes are aimed at ensuring product safety and aim to achieve a 6 log reduction in the food pathogen likely to be of most concern to these products. There is a need in the industry to have relevant data on the growth of non-target organisms capable of surviving standard industry accepted pasteurisation processes in order to understand their effect on product quality and shelf-life. This project will consider product design and processing factors that can control the development of spoilage organisms that survive after the application of a thermal process.