Shipping Summer Sausage

[aeroforce100]

HI All,

Has anyone had any experience shipping summer sausage cross country?  My plan is to send some sausage as Christmas gifts. This will be a LEM kit sausage.

It will be vacupacked .  Di I need to freeze it?  Ship on dry ice?  or??????

Thanks,

Pete

 

[bmudd14474]

Im pretty sure that you do not need to keep cold if its cured. It would be like buying it at the store where its not in the cold section. But if Im wrong someone will be alot to correct me and Ill be eating crow

 

[aeroforce100]

Thanks for the input.  I was thinking the same thing, but wasn't sure

 

[mballi3011]

As long as the sausage is cured you should be ok to ship. Heck I sent some snack sticks to Iraq one time with no problem.

 

[txbigred]

Unless you have added a starter culture and can verify the PH is below 4.8, and or a way to measure the water activity of the sausage, than it really needs to be refrigerated. All the cure is really for is to prevent the Clostridium botulinum   bacteria from growing while you are smoking the sausage. I wouldn't take the chance.

Dave

 

[mossymo]

I have shipped it a few times. Even though it had cure in it, I shipped it frozen in a cardboard box that was lined with styrofoam and had ice packs on the bottom of the box and on top of the summer sausage. I just shipped it regular parcel posts and was told each time it arrived frozen yet. It does help to ship during the cooler winter months also. A small styrofoam cooler wrapped should ship well also.

 

[DanMcG]

With the holiday's approaching and people thinking about shipping meats, I thought I'd bump this thread to the top. 

The sausage the stores sell are processed to ensure their shelf stability, most of us here can't really verify that with our home made products . 

Unless you have added a starter culture and can verify the PH is below 4.8, and or a way to measure the water activity of the sausage, than it really needs to be refrigerated. All the cure is really for is to prevent the Clostridium botulinum   bacteria from growing while you are smoking the sausage. I wouldn't take the chance.

Dave

I'd Have to agree with TxBigRed and keep it cold. Package it up like MossyMo suggests to be on the safe side.

One other note on shipping cold products, if the shipment contains dry ice, the shipment is considered a Hazardous Material Shipment.  so maybe the self contained ice blocks for keeping you coolers cold would be a good alternitive.       

 

[DanMcG]

Looking around the net I found this on virtualweberbullet.com  ;

[font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]Wet ice—the kind you make in your freezer or buy in bulk at the grocery store—is fine for transporting frozen meat during a short driving trip. You must take care to keep the meat dry as the ice melts. Remember, wet ice is not allowed for airline travel or shipping by UPS or Federal Express.  [/font]

[font=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]I never knew that.[/font]