Application of ozonated water to maintain the quality of chicken meat: effect of exposure time, temperature, and ozone concentration

Abstract

As an environmentally friendly disinfectant, ozone now is being studied as an alternative to chlorine sanitizers in many segments of the food industry. The use of ozone as a superficial disinfectant of meat surfaces has been reported in the meat industry. Few studies on the use of ozone in chicken meat have been reported. Ozonated water treatments improve the quality and extend the shelf life of chicken meat. This research studied the effect of exposure time (40, 80, and 120 min), temperature contact (3, 26, and 37 °C), and ozone concentration (0.21 and 0.38 mg/l) in the optimization of ozonated in effort maintain the quality of chicken meat. The observed quality parameters were total number of aerobic mesophyll bacteria, pH, water content, and protein content. The results show that longer exposure time and lower temperature could lower the rate of decreasing quality in chicken meat. Ozonated water with 0.38 mg/l of ozone concentration is contacted with chicken fillet for 120 minutes at 3°C, it reduced aerobic mesophilic bacteria by 1 unit log cfu/g. The ozone concentrations of 0.21 and 0.38 were able to disinfect total aerobic mesophilic bacteria of 0.42 and 0.89 log cfu/g respectively. There was no significant effect on pH and chicken water content, but protein content decreased by 1%.