Participants: EMBUTIDOS SALGOT, S.A (Leader), JOAQUIM ALBERTÍ, S.A (beneficiary), CAN GARRIGA BIOCIBUS, S.L (non-beneficiary), SEIDAMATIC, S.L (non-beneficiary), VALIDATECH, S.L (contracted) , INNOVACC (coordinator) Investigación y Tecnología Agroalimentarias IRTA (OPI).

The meat sector in Catalonia is the main agri-food sector, with a turnover of more than 10,000 million euros. This industry is committed to vertical integration in order to guarantee the traceability of products from the farm to the point of sale. Catalonia is the leader in Spain in the production of quality meats and sausages, with a tradition that represents 30% of national production. Cooked meat products, produced using techniques such as heat treatment (pasteurisation, sterilisation, smoking), require strict monitoring to guarantee food safety, especially with regard to the reduction of pathogens such as Listeria monocytogenes and Clostridium botulinum.

To improve the organoleptic quality and sustainability of cooked meat products, it is crucial to optimise thermal processes. Currently, many manufacturers use excessive times and temperatures, which can deteriorate taste and increase unnecessary energy and water consumption. The project proposes to improve these processes by reducing cooking time and temperature, without compromising food safety, in order to obtain better quality and more sustainable products. This optimisation would allow better management of resources and an improvement in the competitiveness of the sector.

The main objective of the project is: the development of a decision support tool for the design, optimisation and validation of heat treatments of cooked meat products. This tool, called ‘LeQuSos’, aims to predict cumulative lethality (Pvalue), product quality (CValue) and process sustainability (Sosvalue), based on the process conditions defined by the users. The aim is to improve food safety, organoleptic quality and energy efficiency in the production of cooked meat products.

To achieve these objectives, the project includes various actions, such as the implementation of an IoT monitoring system to record thermal data during the cooking process, the development of a predictive model based on physical laws to predict the temperature distribution in the product, and the obtaining of the kinetic parameters of thermal inactivation, quality and sustainability. In addition, the parameters will be integrated into the ‘LeQuSos’ tool to optimise the processing conditions and validate the results obtained in experimental processes.