The influence of carbon dioxide on the quality of rabbit refrigerated meat

Meat of rabbits is healthy nutritious food and fa-vourably differs from other types of meat in flavoring and dietary qualities. Thanks to the low content of fat and cholesterol, taking into account high biological value, meat of rabbits is recommended by nutrition-ists for using in the diet at various diseases. For the increasing the period of storage of meat of refrigerat-ed rabbit refrigerating technology working by the principle of direct contact of carbon dioxide with meat was offered. At cooling treatment by means of snow-like carbon dioxide by discrete way of unpacked and packed carcasses of rabbits change their quality in the course of cooling treatment was studied. For in-dustrial implementation of this technology pilot stud-ies for the definition of the periods of storage of meat of rabbit with preservation of its indicators of quality, both organoleptic, and physical and chemical, in the environment of carbon dioxide were conducted. The assessment of the quality of carcasses of rabbits was made on the complex of indicators: water connecting ability (WCA), acid and peroxide numbers, active acidity and according to microbiological and organo-leptic indicators. According to the results of experi-ments the content of free fatty acids of rabbit fat in the carcasses cooled with carbon dioxide had the most admissible values of acid and peroxide num-bers by 8-th day of storage, and when cooling with air - already by 3-rd day of storage. The obtained data testified that the use of carbon dioxide for cooling treatment of carcasses of rabbit promotes receiving the best microbiological indicators of the product than under traditional way of storage. It was established that at storage of meat of the rabbit processed with CO2 the term of its storage increased with preserva-tion of indicators of quality at high level.