105Chapter 5
Freezing/Thawing
Christian James and Stephen J. James
Introduction
Modern commercial meat freezing has a
surprisingly long history. It is believed that
the fi rst modern meat freezing works were
established at Darling Harbour in Sydney,
Australia, in 1861 (Critchell and Raymond
1912 ). In the next decade, there were a
number of attempts to transport frozen meat.
The fi rst entirely successful frozen meat ship-
ment was that of the S.S. Paraguay from
Buenos Aries to Havre in 1877. Due to a
collision, the ship took seven months to
complete her journey; however, the 5,500
mutton carcasses were still reported to be
in “ in tip - top condition ” when the ship
arrived at Havre. A second voyage was
planned but never happened, and to quote a
Dr. Berg é s (Critchell and Raymond 1912 ),
“ As has often happened in the history of
industries, it has been the French who have
made the discoveries, and the English have
turned them to account to their profi t. ” Thus
it was that the arrival of the S.S. Strathleven
in London on December 8, 1880 with its
cargo of 40 tons of frozen Australian beef
and mutton may be said to have truly started
the international frozen meat trade. This
meat was sold for up to three times its value
in Australia and, as stated in the Daily
Telegraph at the time, “ It has been tested by
the ordinary method of cooking, and found
to be in such good condition that neither by
its appearance in the butchers ’ shops, nor by
any peculiarity of fl avour when cooked for
the table, could it be distinguished from
freshly killed English meat ” (Critchell and
Raymond 1912 ).
Despite this glowing report, soon frozen
meat began to suffer from a perception that
its eating quality was not as good as that of
“ fresh ” chilled meat. In the middle 1950s,
Swift and Company tried to introduce frozen
red meat to the consumer but found that “ the
consumer indicated she was not interested in
purchasing frozen red meats ” (Bernholdt
1974 ). In Australia in 1986, 24% of respon-
dents in a survey of retail and consumer
handling of beef considered that freezing
“ defi nitely affected quality ” and a further
13% felt it would “ under certain circum-
stances ” (Walker and Mitchell 1986 ). Today
some retailers and media still pedal this per-
ception. For example, one online store in the
United States quotes that “ When you are
buying steaks online, you want to get a good
value, and you want to get great quality,
right? We do too! That means we want unfro-
zen steaks ” (Anonymous 2008 ). However,
contrary to this, consumers appear happy to
purchase chilled meat and freeze it at home.
A U.S. survey found that approximately 80%
of a major retailer ’ s customers did this (Payne
et al. 2002 ). A similar New Zealand survey
reported that while the majority of red meat
(84.6%) purchased by consumers surveyed
was fresh (rather than frozen), approximately
64% of the fresh meat they purchased was
subsequently frozen in the home (Gilbert
et al. 2007 ).
Currently, meat for industrial processing
is usually frozen in the form of carcasses,