I work at a major animal hospital and we have two large walk-in freezers in which we store deceased animals and body parts (i.e. testicles and ovaries from sterilizations, spleens from splenectomies, etc).
It’s not pleasant going in there, not only because it’s creepy (walking into a room where you can see dead golden retrievers looking at you through plastic trash bags isn’t a picnic), but because it has an odor to it.
It’s a very mild odor but it’s there nonetheless. It’s not like it hits you in the face but once you step inside and take a breath you’ll smell it. I can’t really describe what it smells like because it’s so mild. I know what putrefaction smells like and it definitely doesn’t smell like it, but it still smells like…dead things.
I noticed the same thing when I worked in a small animal hospital. The freezer was just your standard top-opening freezer that you might find in someone’s basement, but it had the exact same odor to it.
Was I mistaken in believing that freezing halts decomposition?
I’d imagine that’s sublimation of the water (or ice) in the flesh/muscle that your smelling. Plus, those freezers just aren’t going to be cold enough to completely stop all decomposition.
Take a peek at some of the mummified remains (pictures may be offensive to some) of the ill-fated members of the Franklin Expedition. As you can see, decomposition has occurred but not as much as you might have expected in over 150 years.
If an animal body is previously decomposing, I’m sorry, it’s hard for me to notice the smell.
That said, the big walk in coolers in large animal hospitals, if they’re used for storing tissues and animals that will be necropsied/biopsied, then no, they are not frozen. They’re cool down, and that slows down decomposition but does not completely halts it. It doesn’t freeze the body either, as freezing/thawing causes artifact.
I don’t think the smell in the organs placed in the top fridge in smaller animal hospitals is any different from what you smell at your own freezer. It smells (to me) like fresh meat in a freezer (yummy).
Bio research labs typically keep vials of cells in liquid nitrogen (around -200 degrees Celsius) for long-term storage. Conventional freezers generally only keep the temperature at -20 degrees Celsius, so some decomposition would likely still occur with walk-in freezers.
These animals aren’t being necropsied. They’re being stored until the cremation service can pick them up. I’ll try to sneak into the morgue tomorrow to see if there’s a temperature gauge, but I’m pretty sure the animals are frozen. Morbid curiosity forced me to gently poke the dog who was staring me in the face, and she was rock hard, even her nose.
Out of curiosity, I googled walk-in freezers and at the Polar King site, under general documents, [found this regarding defrosting](javascript:__doPostBack(‘_ctl0$_ctl0$dgrdDocuments$_ctl3$lbtnCategory’,‘’)). It looks like these units have auto defrost cycles in which case I would imagine, especially over time, you could get a small amount of decomp.
Once any volatile organic molecules are released, unless they are permanently trapped with 100% efficiency in some air filtration system (unlikely in a freezer), it’s inevitable that a few will end up floating around. And since humans can be strangely acute at perceiving certain compounds, that’s probably what you’re detecting.
So does that mean that if a person sticks a piece of raw steak in the freezer, pulls it out after two months, thaws it, grills it, and eats it, they’re essentially eating decomposing meat? Gross.
I have my doubts about any biological process that requires water as a medium, or essentially all life as we know it, continuing at temperatures below which water can no longer remain liquid. Of course you can have aqueous solutions that remain liquid below 0 C and still support life, but even there you have limits.
There is however one important difference between a steak and a dead Shih Tzu - the latter goes in covered with a full microcosm of critters that have been waiting for this very moment and waste no time jumping on it like dogs on a bone. Your steak was hopefully in a little bit better shape.
Freezer burn isn’t decomposition (or at least, bacterial decomposition in the sense of the OP). It is cell beakdown due to ice crystals forming and subliming. And ageing meat (controlled breakdown) is essential to getting good eating out of meat.
Someone I knew was a missionary/school principal in Pakistan. They always complained about how tough the meat was that they had - they would go to the market on killing day, purchase their cuts in bulk, get it butchered and take it home to freeze - all as fast as possible to prevent spoilage and contamination in the heat. The locals would just go to the market and buy meat that had been hanging around, maybe flies on it, for goodness knows how long. But their meat wasn’t tough. And the answer was cold shortening where freezing the meat immediately fixes it into rigor mortis and makes it really, really tough. Hanging (if you can’t use electrical stimulators) is essential to let rigor pass to give edible meat.
This is what I mentioned above about freezing causing artifacts. We’re not eating it, but it does disrupt how the body looks like microscopically, and also grossly, if you thaw back the body.
I was taught in college that freezing greatly slows down decomposition, but it doesn’t stop it completely. Some microorganisms can survive and even flourish in very extreme environments.
Remember that when they unearth a Woolly Mammoth it is normally fairly decomposed even though it has been frozen solid for thousands of years.