Interpretive Summary: Traditional meat preservation techniques and their modern applications

By: Samuel C Watson

Implications

• Traditionally processed meat products like prosciutto and salami rely on sound preservation techniques that are thousands of years old and originate from ancient regional cultures that to this day maintain modern iterations.
• In the US, small and very small meat processors balance the need to be profitable with the desire to maintain slow production methods that can hinder business growth in order to create products that are authentic to their roots.
• Traditional meat products have been a vital part of the human diet for thousands of years and still have a key role to play in the modern culture of food and diet.

History of Traditional Meat Processing

Food preservation practices date to the beginnings of ancient societies, and the prosperity of an ancient society was often associated with the development of food preservation knowledge and skills. Key among those skills was the ability to harvest salt from natural sources and using salt to extend the shelf life of food (Bloch, 1976). Some meat processing techniques that are still widely used today pay homage to ancient skills like the fire-side smoking of hunter-gatherers and the salting, drying, fermenting, and curing techniques from cultures across the globe. In modern times, traditional in the context of food preservation culture is defined as originating from distinct historic cultures that are linked to specific locations (Bertozzi, 1998), and traditional foods call back to the places where they were initially created. In Europe, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of unique meat products and processes that have existed throughout the history of small towns and larger regions.

Read the full article in Animal Frontiers: Current Topics in Meat Processing.