Pork Loin Treated with High Hydrostatic Pressure as a Food Processing Technology: Subacute Toxicity of the Freeze-Dried Powder and Cytotoxicity of the Methanol Extracts.

High hydrostatic pressure (HP) treatment is used in food processing owing to its sterilization effect. Meat or meat products are sterilized and become tender by HP processing. Therefore, the variety of HP-processed meat products has increased worldwide. However, little is known about the safety of HP-processed meat products. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of HP processing and HP combined with 0.4 M sodium carbonate treatment (HP-Na) on pork loins and to evaluate the subacute toxicity and cytotoxicity of these processing methods. In an in vivo study, we performed 90- and 180-day feeding tests in mice and did not detect any adverse effects in HP-processed and HP-Na-processed pork loins. In addition, we evaluated the cytotoxicity of HP-processed meats, and did not observe any obvious toxicity associated with pork loin extracts in vitro. These results suggest that HP is not associated with risk factors during processing.