Meat, Poultry & Seafood

Freezing meat offers a product with a nutritional quality close to fresh meat, however, it may significantly affect the organoleptic properties of meat such as color. Before freezing, the meat is chilled to between typically 0°C to 10°C. The changes that occur in this period have an important effect on the subsequent quality of the frozen product. Because of high sensitivity to temperature change, the rate of quality loss for refrigerated products generally increases two to eight times for 10°C increase in temperature.

The freezing process has to achieve enough surface drying to minimize microbial growth, while at the same time minimizing weight loss and preserve meat surface appealing to the consumer. The greatest weight losses were registered at slow freezing rates. However, very quick freezing rates caused tough and drier meat. Frozen meat storage temperatures are ideally at or below -18°C. Fluctuations above this temperature, caused by a range of actions from electrical or equipment failure to movement of the product around cool-stores or during transportation will result in product of poorer quality. A properly implemented temperature monitoring and control system is vital to help reduce the risk that could result from poor control in refrigerated distribution in which abuse by high temperature often occurs.

ThermoBlade can help you achieve the goals of maintaining frozen meat, poultry and seafood in the right temperature at right time. ThermoBlade is designed to measure temperatures for frozen meat and seafood and provide a thermal profile for the processors to improve operation efficiencies.

Here is how we can help:

• Implement quality control

With the help of TC-Probes, the production group can use the ThermoBlade to routinely measure key temperatures at consistent locations inside freezers and products, providing documentary proof that the process is on track and quantitative data for quality control.

• Speed maintenance

When it's time to check freezer performance, ThermoBlade collects accurate multi-channel thermal profiles easily. Real-time data collection and display allows immediate freezer diagnosis or, when used as a data logger, data can be downloaded wirelessly without waiting for the ThermoBiscuit to warm to room temperature. After line maintenance operations, it is easy to run the ThermoBlade again to verify freezer performance.

• Optimize line efficiency

Many high-volume manufacturers run multiple products on the same line every day. ThermoBlade can be set up with the product, in the same stacking configuration inside the freezer, to quickly profile the freezing process temperature distribution during process changeover and ensure the quality control. ThermoBlade can be used to quickly find process inefficiencies where product is "over-frozen" and line throughput can be increased yielding more profit without any additional equipment investment.

• Monitor product quality during transportation

ThermoBlade can be used as a data logger to simply collect temperature history during product transportation. The users can download the data to a local laptop in the destination facility.

• Compensate freezer inconsistency

We all know that not every freezer works in the same way. By using ThermoBlade to measure product core temperatures at the various stacking locations,the operators do not need to accommodate the freezer inconsistency. Control the process using the product core temperature in stead of freezer’s thermometer readings.