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Abstract
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Meat is highly susceptible to contamination with harmful microorganisms throughout the production, processing, and storage chain, posing a significant public health risk. Traditional decontamination methods like chemical sanitizers and heat treatments often compromise meat quality, generate harmful residues, and require high energy inputs. This necessitates the exploration of alternative non-ionizing technologies for ensuring meat safety and quality. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of the latest advancements, limitations, and future prospects of non-ionizing technologies for meat decontamination, with a specific focus on ultrasonication. It further investigates the comparative advantages and disadvantages of ultrasonication against other prominent non-ionizing technologies such as microwaves, ultraviolet (UV) light, and pulsed light. Additionally, it explores the potential of integrating these technologies within a multi-hurdle strategy to achieve enhanced decontamination across the meat surface and within the matrix. While non-ionizing technologies have demonstrated promising results in reducing microbial populations while preserving meat quality attributes, challenges remain. These include optimizing processing parameters, addressing regulatory considerations, and ensuring cost-effectiveness for large-scale adoption. Combining these technologies with other methods like antimicrobial agents, packaging, and hurdle technology holds promise for further enhancing pathogen elimination while safeguarding meat quality.
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