Meat Essentials (1): Frozen, Refrigerated, or Freshly Slaughtered - Which Is Safest?
Editor's note: The author of this article is a veterinarian who is also committed to promoting safe domestic meat. This series of articles shares important information about meat from a professional's point of view. Before you read, we want to tell you upfront that this is not sponsored content, nor are we asking everyone to go buy meat from Dr. Guo. We simply hope to invite a veterinarian to provide more information for your reference from a professional perspective!
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In recent years, lifestyles have changed dramatically. We are no longer like the 1950s, when refrigerators were not widespread, so homemakers would buy meat at the market and have to finish cooking it as soon as they got home; meat was relatively unlikely to be stored for too long. Moreover, the meat sold in traditional markets back then was all freshly slaughtered. Although the slaughtering process was not necessarily safe, at least the meat was relatively fresh.
However, in today's society, do you think the meat you buy at the traditional market is all freshly slaughtered? From my perspective as a veterinarian, it is currently completely impossible for pigs to be slaughtered at the traditional market. They must be processed at a certified slaughterhouse or an illegal private slaughterhouse, then transported to traditional markets for sale. Slaughtering takes time, and transport takes time. Slaughtering generally starts around 10 p.m., and around 3 a.m. the meat begins to be transported in batches to traditional markets in various places. What is frightening is that the entire transport process takes place at room temperature. By the time consumers buy it, the meat has already been exposed to room temperature for more than ten hours!
Take chicken as an example. At present, some chickens are safely slaughtered at slaughterhouses, while another portion is slaughtered by vendors at the market. Usually vendors start killing chickens in the early morning (this is the case at the market near my home). If you buy meat around 8 a.m., you may think it is freshly slaughtered, but in fact the meat you bought has already been exposed to room temperature for more than 5-8 hours. In the hot summer, when temperatures easily reach 30-plus degrees, meat left in a hot and humid environment is extremely prone to bacterial growth and spoilage. Usually meat left at room temperature for 1 hour is already not very reassuring. Why would you feed your family meat that has been left at room temperature for so long?
Given current consumption patterns, after we buy fish, meat, or seafood and bring it home, whether it is frozen, refrigerated, or room-temperature meat, in order to preserve the freshness of the food, we all put it into the freezer, hoping that the formation of ice crystals inside the refrigerator will drive the freezing process, so that after the meat is frozen, spoilage can stop immediately, keeping it fresh and also making nutrients less likely to be lost. Therefore, I often ask everyone: since you put it in the freezer when you get home anyway, why insist on buying refrigerated or room-temperature meat, especially after it has been left under those conditions for so long, when in the end you still put it in the refrigerator?