New meat culture from Chr. Hansen improves color, appearance and shelf-life

Say goodbye to pale, greyish meat products with Chr. Hansen’s newest invention - nominated for an Innovation Award at a major European tradeshow.

Chr. Hansen’s researchers have solved a longstanding problem for meat producers. With the new meat culture Bactoferm® Rubis from the global natural ingredients supplier, its customers can succeed in preserving an attractive appearance for their sliced meat products during shelf-life.

When oxygen is an enemy

“Oxygen plays a significant negative role in the shelf-life of sliced Ready-To-Eat (RTE) meat products likely to cause growth of unwanted micro organisms and development of rancid off flavors. Furthermore oxygen has a very strong impact on the color stability of meat products.

Consequently, removal of traces of oxygen has a major impact on the appearance and shelf-life of vacuum or MA-packed (modified atmosphere packed) sliced meat products, and this is the trick that our Bactoferm® Rubis can do in a natural way,” says John Jensen, Marketing Director, Meat Cultures, Chr. Hansen.

“Starter cultures have a long history of safe use and a long line of attributes which provide the characteristics of certain meat products. Our new meat culture emphasizes the color stabilizing effect by reducing and eliminating residual amounts of oxygen in RTE meat products without changing the flavor. The culture simply consumes oxygen as part of its natural metabolism without otherwise affecting the sensoric quality,” he explains.

Meets consumer trends

In today’s food market attractive appearance is extremely important in consumers’ decision to purchase a food product. In the market for pre-packaged sliced meat products this is even more so. Often the meat product is partly or fully visible to underline the freshness and appeal of the product, and Bactoferm® Rubis caters to that.

In addition its all-natural properties meet the global health trend spot on.

“All over the world the pressure from the consumers in terms of demanding healthy, natural products with no artificial additives keeps increasing. With our culture meat producers can add value to their product by the use of a natural ingredient as it elimates the need for antioxidants or synthetic oxygen scavengers,” emphasizes John Jensen.

Easy to apply

A number of additional advantages of Bactoferm® Rubis for the producers are the easy application with no change in the processing layout, increased flexibility in the packaging process and decreased costs as a result of reduced consumer complaints and product returns by the supermarkets.

Nominated for Innovation Award

Chr. Hansen’s new product is nominated for the “Savoury/Meat Innovation of the Year” at FI Europe 2009 on November 17-19, 2009. The candidates represent the best and most innovative ingredients new to the market in the last two years.