Research Progress on Quality and Safety Control Technologies for the Whole Industry Chain of Precooked Meat Dishes

As people’s eating habits change and the rhythm of life accelerates, prepared dishes have developed rapidly in recent years. Consumers have raised higher requirements for the nutrition, safety, hygiene and convenience of diets. Many food safety risks occur in the industry chain of prepared dishes. Industrializing traditional meat products will support meat industrialization in China, the world’s biggest producer and consumer of meat, and prepared dishes will become an important direction for the future development of the meat industry. This paper reviews the processing characteristics of and the key processing and quality control techniques for precooked meat dishes, focusing on the key technologies in the meat preprocessing, cooking, sterilization, packaging and reheating steps. In addition, the quality control techniques for the harvesting, processing and cold chain transportation of raw materials are summarized and the current status and future trends of precooked meat dishes are analyzed. Hopefully, this review will provide a theoretical basis for the development of precooked meat dishes.