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Market constraints lead the industries to favour food products with longer and longer shelf-lives. The extension of use-by-dates requires preservation treatments ensuring food safety and hygiene, without altering the organoleptic and nutritional properties of foods. Whereas packaging under modified atmosphere (PMA) is a packaging technology commonly used to extend the shelf-life, High hydrostatic pressure (HHP) can be considered as an interesting alternative to thermal treatments and addition of food additives. The aim of this study was then to determine if the combination of PMA-HHP had a synergistic effect on the extension of the shelf-life of raw poultry sausages, while considering microbiological and organoleptic aspects. 

The application of HHP treatment of 500 MPa during 5 min at 20°C to sausages conditioned under air or an equimolar mix of N2 - CO2 was found to be efficient in inactivating and controling the endogenous microbial flora, during a 21-day storage, without, however, any signifcant effect of PMA. Netherless, by limiting lipid oxidation, PMA proved to be essential in maintaining the organoleptic quality, a component also considered in the determination of shelf-lives. It was concluded that the combination of PMA and HHP enabled to extend the shelf-life of sausages by 7 days, while ensuring satifactory level of quality.

This work was performed in the framework of the UMT High Pressure, which gathers the UMR SECALIM (Oniris-Inra), the UMR GEPEA (University of Nantes - Oniris - Ecole des Mines - CNRS) and the CTCPA (Technical Center for food preservation).