A deterioration of shelf life may be pertained to a lack of appropriate sensory attributes, or the appearance of a health hazard. Meat products are primarily exposed to the action of microorganisms. The rate of changes during storage, which may lead to microbial contamination of products, and changes in their sensory attributes are affected by the properties and microbial contamination levels of raw materials, the nature and conditions of the technological process, the character of the product and the amount and type of additives. However, in case of the tested wiener type sausages, the quality of which was modified by colouring with cured blood or a betanin solution and which were aromatized using a mixture of spices (lovage root, dried garlic, 1.5:1.0:4.0) no accelerated storage changes were observed in comparison to the reference sausage. The applied modifications of the technological process do not mask storage changes in the analysed sausages. A distinct deterioration of sensory quality characteristics preceded by 3 days the alarm level of microbial contamination of sausages (an increase in the total aerobic bacteria counts to the level above 1 × 10⁶).

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