Electric fields as effective strategies for enhancing quality attributes of meat in cold chain logistics: A review

Meat quality (MQ) is unstable during cold chain logistics (CCL). Different technologies have been developed to enhance MQ during the CCL process, while most of them cannot cover all the links of the cold chain because of complex environment (especially transportation and distribution), compatibility issues, and their single effect. Electric fields (EFs) have been explored as a novel treatment for different food processing. The effects and potential advantages of EFs for biological cryopreservation have been reported in many publications and some commercial applications in CCL have been realized. However, there is still a lack of a systematic review on the effects of EFs on their quality attributes in meat and its applications in CCL. In this review, the potential mechanisms of EFs on meat physicochemical properties (heat and mass transfer and ice formation and melting) and MQ attributes during different CCL links (freezing, thawing, and refrigeration processes) were summarized. The current applications and limitations of EFs for cryopreserving meat were also discussed. Although high intensity EFs have some detrimental effects on the quality attributes in meat due to electroporation and electro-breakdown effect, EFs present good applicability opportunities in most CCL scenes that have been realized in some commercial applications. Future studies should focus on the biochemical reactions of meat to the different EFs parameters, and break the limitations on equipment, so as to make EFs techniques closer to usability in the production environment and realize cost-effective large-scale application of EFs on CCL.