Development of Intelligent Packaging for Real-Time Monitoring of the Freshness of Pork During Storage

Food spoilage is one of the biggest concern in Food Industries. Conventional food packaging indeed acts as a barrier between the food items and the external environment but does not express the real-time freshness of the food items to the consumers. In this technologically driven era, this problem has been solved by Intelligent Packaging. 

In this research, pH-sensitive slips were used as a form of Intelligent Packaging. The hypothesis behind this research was that the spoiling pork sample has increased microbial growth. This leads to the release of Total Volatile Basic Nitrogen (TVB-N) content, which is basic in nature, and changes the color of the pH slips from the acidic medium to the basic medium. In this research, four different dyes and a mixture of all four were used to form five different pH sensitive indicators, which were observed for color change due to TVB-N content. The spoiling of Canadian-based pork sample was observed at room temperature, and all the pH slips gave positive results (i.e., complete color change). To further validate the result, microbial analysis was done for the spoiled sample of pork and a parallel result was obtained between changing the color of pH slips and increased microbial activity. This inexpensive way of developing Intelligent Packaging would be very beneficial for meat industries for future use.