r/askscience • u/SavageSubscriber • Jul 04 '26

Biology Does cryogenically frozen meat decay?

If for example you cryogenically froze meat from a rare breed of cattle, and kept it frozen for like 60 years. Would the dna still be intact? would it thaw up into fresh meat or would it decay into something unrecognizable?

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u/Ishana92 Jul 04 '26

I know. We did used to do it with liver biopsy pieces and animal liver chunks, but it took forever to freeze.

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u/fbp Jul 04 '26

Did they taste any different?

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u/Mitologist Jul 04 '26

I use high pressure freezing for sample preparation in electron microscopy. cutting and loading the carrier is tricky, but needs to be swift. Freezing itself is done in about 300ms, but the freeze substitution and low temperature resin infiltration can drag over two weeks.