Shelf life of red meat is influenced by a number of intrinsic and extrinsic factors making its prediction challenging. Here we investigated the influence of geographically distant abattoir facilities and storage temperature relevant to commercial supply chain on the shelf lives of vacuum packaged (VP) beef and lamb meat. Samples of VP beef and lamb were analysed for surface pH, total viable counts, lactic acid bacterial counts, sensory properties, and associated bacterial community using Illumina MiSeq based 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing over a period of >200 days. The consistent 0.41 pH unit difference between beef and lamb was found to have a profound effect on bacterial community diversity and composition, bacterial growth rates and the rate of loss of sensory quality. Though different community structures were derived from different abattoir source, bacterial growth rate and rate of sensory quality deterioration were found to be comparable for individual meat type. The greatest variation in rates was found resulting from storage temperature and livestock species themselves. Our findings indicate that bacterial growth and sensory quality loss are essentially predictable when considering their temperature dependency, however for successful meat export validation of shelf life predictive models is required due to stochastic variation in abattoir seeded bacterial populations.

红肉的保质期受到许多内在和外在因素的影响，使其预测具有挑战性。在这里，我们调查了地理上相距遥远的屠宰场设施和与商业供应链有关的存储温度对真空包装（VP）牛肉和羊肉的货架期的影响。使用基于Illumina MiSeq的16S rRNA基因扩增子在200天内对VP牛肉和羔羊样品的表面pH值，总活力计数，乳酸菌计数，感官特性和相关细菌群落进行了分析。发现牛肉和羔羊之间一致的0.41 pH单位差异对细菌群落的多样性和组成，细菌的生长速率以及感官质量的丧失速率具有深远的影响。尽管不同的屠宰场来源具有不同的群落结构，但发现细菌生长速率和感官质量下降速率与每种肉类具有可比性。发现速率的最大变化是由于储存温度和牲畜物种本身造成的。我们的发现表明，考虑到它们对温度的依赖性，细菌的生长和感官质量的下降基本上是可以预测的，但是，由于屠宰场播种细菌种群的随机变化，对于成功的肉类出口，需要对保质期预测模型进行验证。