A New Zealand supermarket is trialling a new fresh meat storage system that means meat can stay fresh for up to two months.Plastics company Vertex islaunching its SecureFresh chilled-meat packaging system, and Progressive Enterprises is trialling the system at the moment. The Securefresh system extracts oxygen from the meat pack and replaces it with carbon dioxide. As long as the meat is kept at 0°C, it should stay fresh for up to two months, according to Vertex, thus cutting waste for supermarkets. Waste is an issue of growing concern in the meat sector. Soon-to-be-listed Vertex claims that in the US between 20% and 30% of meat in supermarkets is dumped after a few days, though the figure is thought to be lower in New Zealand. However, even at 10% waste, that would imply that as much as NZ$100m (US$49.1m) worth of meat is dumped each year. Progressive's divisional manager for meat and seafood, Brett Ashley, said it was "still evaluating the benefits" of the new system and a final decision would take several months.One of the issues the company will be addressing is whether consumers will actually want to buy two-month-old meat. The company currently tries to cut and sell meat on the same day.

                                                 12 Jun 2002 Source: just-food.com editorial team