CHILLED BEEF

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 October 1939, Page 3

CHILLED BEEF

TRADE TREBLED IN THREE YEARS REDUCING CONTAMINATION. The production of chilled beef is one of Australia’s most rapidly expanding primary industries. In three years it trebled itself to reach an export value of nearly £1,000,000 for 1937-38, and the expansion has gone on since. About eight years ago it became apparent that public demand in Great Britain for Australian frozen beef was diminishing, chilled beef, chiefly from South American countries, having taken its place in popular favour. Owing to the great distance from British markets and the highly perishable nature of the chilled article, Australia had not been able to participate in this trade. In 1933, however, investigators of the British Food Investigation Board, at Cambridge University, discovered that about 10 per cent of the carbon dioxide in the storage atmosphere almost doubled the storage life. In this discovery lay the germ of the establishment of the Australian chilled beef industry. It was soon found that beef stored with carbon dioxide was still liable to considerable microbial spoilage on the long voyage to Great Britain, and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research accordingly undertook investigations aimed at a- marked reduction in the number of micro-organisms acquired at the meat works, methods of chilling in the meat works which would prevent further growth of the organisms, and precise control of storage conditions on shipboard. In a bulletin just issued by the council are described investigations aimed at the deveopment of the best procedure to be adopted in the cooling and storage of export beef, bearing in mind the necessity to reduce microbial contamination to a minimum. The investigations themselves were carried out in Brisbane and Sydney by the council’s section of food preservation and transport, which was greatly assisted by the trade.

During the cooling phase the extent of the changes in the bacterial population was found to depend on the rate and extent of surface drying of the beef, and the rate of cooling of the surface tissues, in which the bacteria reside. For a fixed rate of cooling, increased air speeds over the beef lead to increases in the rate and extent of water removal, and therefore, result in decreases in the bacterial populations at 24 hours. The higher the rate of cooling the better is the control of bacterial growth. A high rate of water removal also favours a reduction in the rate of loss of bloom of beef during storage. Conditions laid down by the council for the preparation and cooling of beef are being actively and successfully applied in most Australian meat works exporting chilled beef. The consequent improvement in the condition of beef landed in Great Britain has led to the rapid expansion of markets.