dioxide addition and irradiation can ba used to inhibit microbiological spoilage and prevent foodborne disease (Leistner 1987,vander Marel et al. 1988. Britz and Tracey 1998, Zeittoun and Debevere 1990), To ensure microbiological stability of most foods, suitable combinations of more than one of the above methods are applied because each one of the above preservation methods is an additional "hurdle" to microbial proliferation (Leistner 1987).
In-package pasteurization of vacuumpackaged Vienna sausages increased the shelf life of the vacuum-packaged product, but did not eliminate microbiological spoilage (von Holy et ai. 1991b). Because a pH decrease is known to lower the heat-resistance of micro-organisms (Ingram et al.1956), and organic-acid decontamination has reportedly extended the shelf of fresh beef and poultry (van der Marel et al. 1988, Anderson and Marshall 1989, Zeitoun and Debevere 1990. Praasi et al .1991). this study investigated the prospect of additional shelf life extension of vacuum-packaged Vienna sausages by a combination of pre-packaging organic acid surface and in-package pasteurization