The objective of this work is to develop and validate moisture movement model for vacuum cooling of cooked meat. Vacuum cooling of cooked meat with cylindrical shape was carried out to obtain the variations of temperature, moisture content and evaporation rate. Developed model was tested by the experimental data. The calculated results were compared with the experimental data. The maximum deviation between the calculated and the experimental temperatures is within 10 degrees C. The results show that moisture movement model can predict the temperature and pressure distributions within the cooked meat. In addition, the calculated and experimental results suggest that total pressure differences within cooked meat and between cooked meat and vacuum chamber are the major driving forces of moisture movement that controls the vacuum cooling rate. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.