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Improving meat quality: the blueprint approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2010

C. C. Warkup
C. C. Warkup
Affiliation:
Meat and Livestock Commission, PO Box 44, Winterhill House, Snowdon Drive, Milton Keynes
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Abstract

Consumer demand for meat is strongly influenced by sensory aspects of meat quality, particularly visual appeal and eating quality. One of the most important of these traits is tenderness which is notoriously complex in origin and hence difficult to control. Potential interactions between diet, pre-slaughter handling, chill rate, muscle shortening during chilling and, therefore, toughness are presented to illustrate the complexity of controlling the trait. The final eating quality result is far from predictable. The Meat and Livestock Commission (MLC) has identified the enhancement of eating quality of beef and pork as important objectives for industry. It has produced and tested blueprint specifications which aim to summarize the ‘best state of the art’ regarding eating quality at each stage of the production and processing chain. The strengths and weaknesses of this approach are discussed. The standard blueprint specification for pork produced an improvement in tenderness of 0.6 scale points (P<0.001, scale = 1 to 8) over random retail purchases of pork chops and a significant reduction in variance. However, considerable residual variation remains, providing the opportunity for greater improvements to be made in the future.

Type
Research Article
Information
BSAP Occasional Publication , Volume 17: Safety and Quality of Food from Animals , January 1993 , pp. 63 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © British Society of Animal Production 1993

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