Application of vacuum heat shrink packaging in meat preservation

Mar 06, 2025

Vacuum Heat Shrink Packaging in Meat Application

Food safety incidents have occurred frequently and attracted more and more attention in recent years, prompting high-quality and safe food to become the priority choice of more and more consumers.

China is the world's largest meat producer, but most of the meat products are primary processed products, and the refined and deep processed products are relatively small. Fresh meat still accounts for a large share of the meat consumption market. Production of meat is divided into frozen meat, chilled meat and cooled meat in three forms. Frozen meat due to the nutritional problems of taste makes consumption subject to certain constraints, chilled meat due to inspection and quarantine cannot be guaranteed, coupled with higher temperatures microbial reproduction leading to health problems, and gradually being replaced by more nutritious flavorful, health guarantee cooled meat.

Cooled meat, with its advantages of tenderness, flavor, hygiene, freshness and nutrition, is rapidly growing into the mainstream of meat consumption in China. Fresh meat, because of its rich nutrition, is suitable for microbial growth and will spoil quickly.

However, the packaging of our cooled meat is still in an enlightened stage. Most of the cooled meat is in the primitive unpackaged state of operation, thus cross contamination can’t be avoided, loss can’t be controlled, all of these factors affect the development of China's cooled meat. However, in Europe and the United States and other meat processing developed countries, more than 90% of the cooled meat are packaged to extend the shelf life of meat products, to avoid cross-contamination, reduce losses, and ensure the health and safety of meat products.

Packaging, as an important part of the production and marketing of cooled meat, can isolate external microorganisms, prevent cross-contamination, inhibit the growth and reproduction of spoilage microorganisms, and extend the shelf life. Among the factors affecting the shelf life of fresh meat, packaging and temperature are particularly important.

At present, vacuum heat shrink packaging, as an emerging processing method, has received widespread attention, the packaging film is mainly used by multi-layer extrusion of high barrier materials, with water and oxygen barrier, hot water shrinkage and puncture resistance, especially in the sealing also has a strong resistance to oil and grease, which can effectively avoid air leakage caused by sealing contamination.

Heat shrink packaging bags is a special vacuum packaging. It is a different plastic resin by the same layer co-extrusion process made of a bag, in 80-84 ℃ hot water in 1 second to complete the contraction, so that the packaging material close to the surface of the meat products, as if the “second layer of skin”, so as to reduce the cooling of the meat out of the water, to improve the appearance of the packaging, extend the shelf life of cooled meat. The biggest difference with the ordinary bags is “shrinkage”, and the most important difference is “shrinkage”. Meat shelf life, and the biggest difference between ordinary bags is “shrinkage”. Shrink bags originated in 1940, the U.S. market after World War II, used to reduce frozen turkey freeze-dried.

Shrink bags are used in the protective packaging of a variety of food products, applied to a variety of meat products (including beef, lamb, pork, poultry), cheese products, etc., of which, the meat products in the cooling meat industry are the most widely used.

The main advantages of shrink packaging for cooling meat are:

        1. Extend the shelf life of chilled meat, realize the cooling meat large circulation, improve the structure of the industry. Using shrink bag packaging in chilled beef shelf life can reach 90 days; chilled pork shelf life can reach 45 days; in the domestic, chilled beef shelf life up to 80 days, chilled pork shelf life can reach 20 days.

         2. Shrink bag packaging can reduce product loss. Shrink bag packaging can reduce the weight loss due to water evaporation in storage and transportation. Secondly, heat shrinkage to form the second layer of meat batch, to exclude common due to bag fold folds produce capillary water absorption phenomenon, greatly reducing the product out of water.

         3. Save storage space, reduce shipping costs and storage costs. Due to the current stage of live transportation restrictions, the unit space storage space utilization rate is relatively low, the use of split meat block can save space about 30%, saving transportation costs.

        4. Improve the quality of cooled meat food, meat products are safer. Chilled meat in the storage and transportation process, the use of heat shrink packaging can effectively reduce cross-contamination, slow down the microbial reproduction rate of meat products, check the shelf life of meat products.