From March 2014 newsletter
Differentiating between fresh and frozen-thawed meat
As the EU Food Information to Consumers Regulation comes
ever-closer to being implemented in December 2014, labelling
will change for fresh and frozen-thawed meat. The term
'defrosted' will be required to accompany the name of
defrosted foods where freezing has an effect on safety or
quality. This will be useful as frozen-thawed meat has a
tendency to have a shorter shelf life than fresh meat, and any
meat that is not labelled correctly has the potential to be
passed off by rogue traders as 'fresh' when it has in fact been
frozen.
We have put in place a method to distinguish between meat
that is fresh and meat that has been frozen-thawed by using a
mitochondrial enzyme, beta-hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase
(HADH), which is released when meat is frozen. For example,
two meat samples were tested - one which was frozenthawed,
and another which was analysed without freezing.
HADH activity was measured in meat press juice extracted
from the samples. It was found that HADH activity was much
higher in the meat that was frozen-thawed, and so using this
as a measure provides a means of determining the authenticity
of "fresh" meat with respect to freezing.
Contact: John Dooley
+44(0)1386 842203
john.dooley@campdenbri.co.uk