Putting a freeze on meat waste

A report has shown inconsistent fridge temperatures and confusing cold storage advice could be contributing to meat waste in Aussie households.

With Australian households wasting over 140,000 tonnes of meat a year, experts say there’s a growing need to understand how people are using, or not able to effectively use, their fridges to reduce meat waste.

The report was led by RMIT and supported by Fight Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre and Meat and Livestock Australia. It combined existing research with in-depth interviews and observations in 20 households during warmer and cooler seasons, revealing their shopping, eating, cooking and food storage practices. The study also monitored fridge and freezer temperatures in 56 households.

Project lead and RMIT Research Fellow Dr Bhavna Middha said the findings should concern Australians making an effort to save food and meat from waste due to rising grocery prices.

According to the research, 17% of fridges monitored were warmer or cooler than the recommended range of 2–7°C.

Food that is too warm can cause bacteria to multiply quickly. When food is too cold, it can freeze or get freezer burn. In both cases, the food is spoiled.

Across different shelves, there were inconsistent temperatures, going up to an average of 10°C and down to –1.1°C.

Almost half the freezers monitored had average temperatures outside of the optimal range.

According to Middha, fluctuating temperatures could be attributed to how often the fridge was opened. Households with children reported opening their fridge more often, possibly affecting the stability of fridge temperatures.

According to Food Standards Australia and New Zealand, potentially hazardous foods need to be kept at under 5°C to prevent food poisoning as bacteria can multiply to dangerous levels between 5 and 60°C.

Other factors contributing to food waste can be confusing cold storage advice and social pressures to over-cater at gatherings.

“Many households we interviewed said conflicting information about how long food can be kept in the fridge meant a lot of leftovers and uncooked meat was discarded just in case it was unsafe to consume,” Middha said.

“A one-stop advice platform for food storage could be a really useful tool to combat all the conflicting food storage advice that’s confusing households.”

Some households were using freezers as money-saving food storage, buying meat on special with the intention to freeze to prolong shelf life. “While it might be a great short-term option to save money and expiring meat from waste, this can lead to households buying more freezers to store bulk packs of meat, leading to excess costs and energy consumption,” Middha said.

At the same time, Middha said households avoided freezing red meat, believing freezing affected its quality as it could lead to freezer burn. They also found it inconvenient to thaw meat.

The research found households were generally unaware their fridges could be leading food to spoil faster.

“Most households blamed their own behaviours, such as reading the use-by date wrong, before considering their fridge might be the culprit,” Middha said.

In Australia, the red meat sector contributes to almost 12% of Australia’s net greenhouse gas emissions, so the burden of bringing about change should be shared amongst policymakers, product designers, manufacturers, retailers and consumers.

“Understanding the complexities of household behaviours around food storage can help these stakeholders create better strategies and products that will help save food from waste,” Middha said.

The research found fridges and freezers were too deep and lacked shelving to give the user visibility of what was being stored, giving fridge designers and manufacturers an opportunity to design and manufacture cold storage with better shelving and visibility.

The social practice of over-catering at parties and barbecues also needed to be explored, with many households finding it challenging to store and consume leftover cold cuts and BBQ meats.

“Practices of meat consumption and cold storage in Australian households: Consumer fridge behaviour and waste reduction of red meat” was published by Meat and Livestock Australia.

Image credit: iStock.com/Qwart