Although sensory and/or microbiological analyses are widely relied on
when assigning shelf-life of foods or trouble shooting problems with s
poilage under storage, they do have drawbacks. Delay in obtaining resu
lts is one of them. The expense of the expert panels required to obtai
n meaningful sensory evaluations is another, while spoilage is not alw
ays of microbial origin. Even when it is, there are an increasing numb
er of situations, including that of meals and fish packaged in modifie
d atmospheres, where the relationships between microbial growth and sp
oilage onset is poorly defined. Chemical analysis has long been recogn
ized as a means of circumventing at least some of concluded that chemi
cal characterization of spoilage processes is presently of most value
in trouble shooting i.e., establishing the causes of spoilage. Its val
ue in assigning total or remaining shelf-life requires more knowledge
of the chemical processes leading to reduced acceptability/spoilage an
d of their correlations with sensory and microbiological changes.