Meat tenderness is the most important quality attribute sought after by consumers, therefore it strongly influences their re-purchase intent and their choice of particular meat cut. Before placing the meat in the market a tenderization process is always needed in order to overcome the unavoidable natural process called “rigor mortis” that occurs after slaughter and makes meat tough to the point that it becomes not edible.
Ageing, the natural tenderization process widely used by meat producers, consists in holding the meat unpacked (dry ageing) or vacuum packed (wet ageing) under refrigeration for long periods (7 – 90 days depending on the age of the animal and the meat cut. The main limitation of the process is that is highly time- and energy-consuming (more than 28.000 Kw per carcass) resulting in high processing costs (e.g. 3,000 € for a 500Kg carcass tenderized 15 days, 0.4 €/Kg per day). Longer tenderization periods required for tougher cuts make the process unprofitable for meat producers who finally sell these cuts as minced or processed meat, losing market value. In this scenario, it is clear why the meat industry is strongly interested in a more efficient solution for meat tenderization, which can help increase profit margins in fresh meat products and revalorize those tougher beef meats.
Trying to provide a solution to this problem, we have developed TENBRIN: a high efficient equipment for meat tenderization based on High Power Ultrasounds technology as an alternative to traditional aging. Our optimized tenderization process will lead to a time reduction up to 80% for the whole tenderization process for a wide range of meat cuts and animal types. Moreover, we considered the possibility to expand its functionality to meat brining, prompted by the demonstrated ability of HPUS to accelerate mass transfer in food systems making it an ideal solution for this kind of processes. With our innovative equipment we address to meat processing industry as well as to big supermarkets, hypermarkets and Cash & Carry that have their own meat processing and packaging plants, offering the solution for obtaining high quality meat with minimum operating costs.
