Current Status of Food Packaging for Cured Meat Products

Introduction and motivation Cured meat products are largely consumed as packaged food, thanks to high convenience, ease to use and long shelf-life extension. Packaging generally used for cured meat products is based on multilayered plastic materials, which are not environmentally sustainable due to the origin from nonrenewable sources and the non- recyclability caused by issues related to the layers’ separation. Therefore, there is an urgent demand to identify effective, and sustainable packaging solutions capable of ensuring the same food quality and safety as conventional packaging materials in the meat sector. Methodologies This review aims at providing a comprehensive overview of the past, present, and future of packaging specifically used on meat products, including a detailed elaboration about the status quo in processed meat packaging to improve sustainability in the sector. Results Cured meat products are very sensitive to deterioration phenomena, such as microbial growth, lipid oxidation and colour change, mainly caused by the residual oxygen and water vapor concentration in the headspace of the package. Traditionally, these meat products are packaged in a modified atmosphere condition, strictly without oxygen, combined with multi-layered plastic packaging, made of PET and PA which provide a printing surface and the thermal resistance, then PE confers mechanical properties, and finally EVOH, AlOx or SiOx, constitute the barrier polymers. However, different materials negatively impact mechanical recyclability since the recycling industry is not currently able to identify, collect and separate the different layers. Compatibilizers could solve the problem, but currently, this procedure is limited to specific applications not related to food. Moreover, chemical recycling could be possible for plastic too, but it is not environmentally and economically sustainable. To this regard, the European Union aims at improving the collection of plastic waste, to modernize the EU’s sorting and recycling capacity, and for last to create viable markets for recycled plastics. In this complex scenario, where recycling is challenging, European environmental policies are oriented toward the reduction of unnecessary generation of plastic waste, especially waste from overpackaging, the designing for recyclable and renewable sources-based packaging, and the reduction of the complexity of packaging materials. Significance of the work Based on the European environmental policies, packaging solutions for cured meat products should be consider the use of less materials, but also substitute multilayers materials with monolayer solutions and finally the use of biobased materials, in terms of renewable sources and the greener end of life scenario. However, only a few studies have focused on the quality attributes of cured meat products packaged in more sustainable solutions and moreover, there are no LCA studies that investigate several packaging solutions for cured meat against their environmental performance.