Garlic-infused olive oil as meat preservative to control bacterial spoilage

Garlic and olive are used as food enhancers for a long time and also as a traditional medicine that could help cure certain diseases. Garlic and olive have antimicrobial and antioxidant properties that could help in preserving meat, thus, increasing its shelf life. Meat can spoil in a short time due to microbial growth. Garlic contains allicin that acts as an antimicrobial. The allicin in garlic was extracted by crushing the garlic and mixing it with olive oil to produce garlic-infused olive oil. The meat was cut into 12 pieces of 10 g each and divided into three treatments. Sample A acted as the Control sample. Sample B was meat coated with 25% garlic-infused olive oil of meat weight while Sample C was meat coated with 50% garlic-infused olive oil of meat weight. All samples were refrigerated for 12 days before tested. Then, the meat was homogenised and the solution was used to perform the spread plate method for the microbial count in meat. The analysis was performed using Oneway ANOVA, Duncan test and t-test to obtain significant difference (pS0.05). The colour change of meat OS) was determined using the formula proposed by Sharma and Bala. The results showed that Sample B had the best formulation in reducing the microbial growth while Sample C was the most suitable in preserving meat's colour. This study proved that the formulation from Sample B namely meat with garlic-infused olive oil 25% of meat weight warrants further development of research for commercialisation purposes.