Meat Consumption and Handling

**143**

**Chapter 8**

**Abstract**

**1. Introduction**

Preservation of Seafoods by

*Jag Pal, Om Pravesh Kumar Ravi, Sangeeta Kumari* 

fishery products with recent, combined updated information.

**Keywords:** hurdle technology, seafood, quality, spoilage and microorganism

Since the time immemorial, human society has been dependent on foods for their existence. We derive a variety of foods from plants and animals such as sea-foods, eggs, fishes etc. All these are consumed by man to satisfy their nutritional requirements, proper body growth and development, health and to increase their appetite value. But the food items of animal origin are perishable in nature as a result they get spoiled due to microbial activity. Hence to reduce this toxicity of food 'hurdle technology' was developed several years ago for the production of safe, stable, nutritious, tasty and economical foods. The hurdle technology, also called combined methods or combined processes, is an integrated approach of basic food preservation methods for making the food more safe, stable and nutritious [1]. It can also be defined as a method of achieving control or elimination of pathogens present in the foods for creating safe and shelf - stable food. The concept of hurdle technology is quite old but has been used by many countries across the globe including India for effective preservation of foods. It advocates the wise use of a combination of different preservation factors or techniques termed as hurdles in order to achieve multi-target,

Fish and seafoods are a highly perishable product due to the biochemical composition and the high microbial load on the skin and gills of fish. The natural microflora that is more adopted to low temperatures results in lower thermal bacterial shock at the storage temperature. The development of new fish processing techniques is required because the demand for fish or seafood with minimum changes in sensory Biochemical and nutritional quality. This has led to the advent of hurdle technology in the field of seafood technology. Hurdle technology is the combined use of several preservation methods to make a product shelf-stable, to improve quality and to provide additional safety. This technology is used in many countries of the world, including India. The factors used for food preservation is called as hurdles. A combination of hurdle such as high temperature, refrigeration, irradiation, drying and smoking etc. are applied to eliminate the growth of microorganism. The application of several hurdle may reduce the rate of fish spoilage caused by spoilage microbe. The objective of this book chapters is focus on the preservative effect of hurdles technology on the quality and shelf-life fish and

Hurdle Technology

*and Akhilesh Kumar Singh*

## **Chapter 8**
