# Marination as a Hurdle to Microbial Pathogens and Spoilers in Poultry Meat Products: A Brief Review
## 2 Marination  
Marination, as a process, involves the soaking of foods in a salted liquid with seasonings such as oregano, thymne, laurel, garlic, and others. The acidity of many marinades comes from the employment of organic acids, usually from sources such as lemon juice, soy sauce, vinegar, wines, and others. Nowadays, marination is a concept that varies from country to country and culture to culture. Sometimes, simply salting a product is viewed as a marination process. In other instances, the products containing inorganic phosphates or spices are considered marinated products. Plumping, the process of injecting raw poultry with salt water, chicken stock, or any other flavouring substance, can also be considered a form of marination [52].  
Even though acquiring various meanings through history and cultures, marinated products are still a current and modern fashion adopted in large commercial markets. In Finland, 80% of the poultry meat sold at retail had some form of marination [52]. The current success of marination is owing to three factors: profits, waste, and consumer expectations. Regarding the first and second aspects, marinated products aim to increase consumers' taste experience, enticing them to buy the product over other non-marinated offers. At the same time, marinated products are less wasteful since marinades can reduce the number of spoilage bacteria present in meat, sustaining its texture and flavour for an extended time [53; 54]. Marination might be highly beneficial to the meat industry and retail chains since it contributes to increasing product shelf life, thus decreasing food waste. Additionally, these products are usually ready-to-cook, with no further preparation required. Besides this aspect, the lack of additional handling by the consumer, which reduces the likelihood of cross-contamination events in the consumer's kitchen, is a safety feature of these products that is hardly ever considered.  
Although possessing many advantages, marinades have some shortcomings. Commercially available marinades might hold some antimicrobial activity against some foodborne pathogens, but this is not the norm, with marinade formulations not being designed with this purpose in mind. At the retail stage, the product safety and shelf-life of the vast majority of marinated products are ensured by synthetic food preservatives. Therefore, there would be an economic interest for companies to develop clean-label marinated products that achieve their safety and shelf-life by employing marinades containing natural ingredients.  
Additionally, alongside the marination process, we can incorporate supplemental strategies for food preservation, with some of the available procedures enhancing marinade absorption. A case in point is marinade uptake, which has been shown to be improved by combining other technologies, such as sous-vide [55], ultrasounds [56], and high hydrostatic and hydrodynamic pressure [57; 58]. Furthermore, in the instances of some preservation technologies, exposure to the marination solution increases the sensitivity of the meat microbiota to the stabilisation procedure (e.g., thermal inactivation) [59].  
Several studies have been carried out to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of different marinade recipes and techniques. Some of these studies are summarised in Table 1.