growth in refrigerated horsemeat: it's importance in the quality of meat *

Horsemeat is an important eco- nomic resource for our country, as Argentina is considered one of the leading world export- ers of horsemeat. But there is little research about the quality of it. It was examined the effect of: (i) storage temperature (0, 4˚C) and (ii) gaseous permeability of the packaging film (polyethylene and EVA SARAN EVA for vacu- um packaging) on the growth of bacteria (Total Aerobic Mesophilic Heterotrophic Bacteria, Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonas sp.) isolated from horse muscle. Microbial growth was modelled using Gompertz or the Linear Regression Models. The lowest final bacte- ria counts were obtained with the combina- tion of 0˚C and vacuum packaging. At higher temperatures, 4˚C, there were no significant differences (p<0.05) among the final counts in relation to both films. The lowest values of µ (microbial growth rate) for the development of studied microorganisms were observed in samples stored in EVA SARAN EVA.